Tigran Hamasyan

A true piano virtuoso with a powerful groove, Hamasyan effortlessly blends intense jazz improvisation and progressive rock with the rich folk music of his native Armenia. Born in 1987 in Gyumri, he began his musical journey in childhood, at home, where he was exposed to a great diversity of influences. He started playing the piano at the age of three, performed at festivals and competitions from the age of eleven, and won the piano competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003. He released his first album, World Passion, in 2004, at just seventeen years old. The following year, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Among his other albums are New Era, Red Hail, A Fable — for which he received a Victoires de la Musique —, Shadow Theater and Luys i Luso, recorded with the State Chamber Choir of Yerevan, centred on Armenian sacred music spanning the 5th to the 20th century. His first album for Nonesuch, Mockroot (2015), won an Echo Jazz Award for Best International Instrumentalist (piano). This was followed by An Ancient Observer (2017), the EP For Gyumri (2018), Revisiting the Film (2021) and StandArt (2022). In 2021, he also received the Deutscher Jazzpreis in the international piano/keyboards category. He has released albums on Plus Loins, Universal France, Nonesuch and ECM.

His new conceptual album, The Bird of a Thousand Voices, is out in August 2024 on naïve, marking his first collaboration with the label. Tigran composes, orchestrates and arranges a much-anticipated project that blends his folk roots with rock influences. The first single, "The Kingdom", also exists as an interactive experience via an online game. This double album is inspired by an ancient Armenian tale in which a hero travels into invisible worlds to find a mythical bird of a thousand songs, capable of awakening peoples and bringing harmony back to the world.