info@westcontacteast.com
About ¨Contact¨
Contact¨ is an experimental world-music project, connects people in several points. It is an aural representation of common cultural values that unite eastern and western people with Agoshian’s compositions and improvisations of Agoshian and Bostancı. The values have social, commercial and artistic contents. The project connects diverse elements such as east and west, old and new etc. . Eastern microtonal (maqam) music techniques meets with western (poly/a)tonal music techniques. Eastern aural tradition meet with western written tradition. Acoustic instruments meet with electronic systems. Abstract improvisations meet with concrete music. Every composition has a unique story and the performers will briefly explain them on stage.
Contents
The project consist of ten musical compositions: Prolog, Agora, Orient Express, Tea’n Coffee, Tulip Mania, Silk Road (commercial), The Ambassadors, Hagia Sophia, Bosphorus, and Epilog. Agoshian designed the atmosphere and composed starting phrases of parts of the works. The rest of the music will be performed with improvisations of duo.
About Us
Ardashes Agoshian is a double bassist, prolific composer, music director, conductor and academics based in Amsterdam. He has played solo double bass both home and abroad in various places, most notable venue being Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
He is notable for his compositions and arrangements numbering over a hundred. These have been performed in Turkey as well as in various countries ranging from Canada to England by such significant names as Prof. Cihat Askin and Steinway artist Sahan Arzruni. His concerto for double bass solo and a cappella choir named “Romeo ve Juliet,” the first of its kind, was world-premiered in 2011 in a joint concert by CorISTAnbul Chamber Choir and Ensemble Vocal from Hamburg. He has also participated in CD recordings for Naxos and other companies. He also wrote the first Kurdish Opera,¨Tosca¨. It successfully staged six times in the Netherlands.
Agoshian completed his master’s degree in Early Music (Violone) with Prof. Margaret Urquhart from Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2019. He has received his B.A., master’s and doctorate in Double Bass from Istanbul University State Conservatory with Prof. Tahir Sümer.
He is also a Composition and Orchestral Conducting Fellow of the London College of Music. He also studied composition and conducting with Selman Ada and Orhan Şallıel. He taught double bass and chamber music at the IUSC and is the conductor of the youth choir of the conservatory. He is the founder-director of CorISTAnbul Chamber Choir, an international chamber choir, and HayCappella, the first independent Armenian chamber choir in Istanbul. He regularly gave concerts with his Baroque ensemble at various churches in Istanbul, CorISTAnbul Baroque Orchestra. He studied as Kappelmeister and Organist in German Protestant Church, Armenian Protestant Church and Armenian Orthodox Church. He has also studied as guest conductor at many projects, staged by the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet.
Agoshian is currently a professor at Fontys Academy of Music and Performing Arts.
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