The concerts organized throughout the year at the Villa Empain resonate with the sounds of the East and the West. Here, intercultural dialogue borrows a universal language, that of music.
Concerts
At the crossroads of Turkish and Armenian music, between tradition and modernity
By the music action lab women
28 january 2023
True to its mission of promoting dialogue between cultures, the Boghossian Foundation, in partnership with the Brussels association Platform 50 and the Franco-Armenian NGO Yerkir, invited six musicians from Turkey, Armenia, France and Belgium to undertake residences. At the end of their stay, a unique concert, combining current and traditional Armenian and Turkish music, was organized at the Villa Empain.
Black: The war through the eyes of a musician
By sevak avanesyan
13 may 2023
Cellist Sevak Avanesyan performs masterpieces for cello, from Bach to Ligeti to Komitas, in two concerts to benefit the families of the victims of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
At the dawn of musical romanticism
By ABDEL RAHMAN EL BACHA with FUMIKA MOHRI AND SUZANNE VERMEYEN
23-25 june 2023
Abdel Rahman El Bacha, First Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Piano, Suzanne Vermeyen on cello and Fumika Mohri, 6th Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Violin play a repertoire from the dawn of Romanticism, during two exceptional evenings in the salons of the Villa Empain.
Armenia-Turkey perspectives
Concert in tribute to komitas
29 january 2022
Echoing its mission of intercultural dialogue, the Boghossian Foundation and Plateforme 50 was pleased to bring together four Armenian and Turkish musicians for a tribute concert honouring the Armenian composer and musicologist Komitas. Driven by the desire to fuse in the world Komitas, the musicians Ardashes Agoshian, Natali Boghossian, Aykut Dursen, and Vardan Hovanissian put their talents at the service of the great composer’s legacy. A visionary musicologist, Komitas recorded 350 Kurdish, 175 Turkish, and nearly 700 Armenian songs throughout his career. The quartet dived into this heritage repertoire using a double bass, a theorbo, a doudouk and a mezzo-soprano voice as instruments.
The Suite
Recital by Victor Julien-Laferrière
26 march 2022
In the prestigious setting of the Villa Empain, the cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière will give a solo recital in a programme of Suites, Serenades and Chant d’Oiseaux from Bach to Casals. An exceptional concert organised in collaboration with the Queen Elisabeth Competition.
The Wind of the Mountains
concert by Ladaniva
19 June 2021
The Boghossian Foundation organised a special concert to raise funds for SOAR (Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief). Linking music from east and west, Armenian singer Jacqueline Baghdasaryan and multi-instrumentalist Louis Thomas combine traditional Armenian and Reunion Island music while incorporating influences from the Balkans and the Middle East. Between song, percussion, guitar, trombone and trumpet, this multicultural group unveils a new approach to music, situated between tradition and modernity, while full of history.
Li Beirut
Concert with nadine nassar and anna sikorzak-olek
11 december 2021
The Boghossian Foundation was pleased to welcome the Voice and Harp Duo of the Lebanese soprano Nadine Nassar and the Polish harpist Anna Sikorzak-Olek for an exceptional concert in aid of the National Music Conservatory of Lebanon. Dedicated to the students and teachers of the Conservatory, the funds raised was used to purchase wind instruments. In the sumptuous salon of the Villa Empain, the accomplished voice and harp duo revisited the works of various renowned composers such as G. Gershwin, F. Chopin, and C. Debussy.
Intersecting views Armenia – Turkey
A musical encounter around a common heritage
31 January 2019
While everything seems to stand in the way of their reunion, the voices of Armenians and Turks unite to tell the memory of a common suffering and dare to question the unspeakable in the hope of finding each other again. The Turkish-born singer Gülay Hacer Toruk, the Iranian musician Shadi Fathi and the group Hey Hey, artists from this plural immigration originating from Turkey, offered a musical moment inhabited by the melancholy but also the joy that characterizes so many peoples of Anatolia.
Armenian Musical Weekend
24 and 25 May 2019
The Boghossian Foundation had the pleasure to welcome the Armenian General Benevolent Union for a musical weekend combining classical and traditional Armenian music.
The first concert was performed by the legend of the doudouk Levon Minassian and his musicians. In front of an audience lulled by the characteristic sounds of the doudouk, the ensemble explored a traditional Armenian repertoire. The new star of the violin Diana Adamyan, first prize winner of the Yehudi Menuhin Competition in Geneva, accompanied by the pianist Mamikon Nakhapetov, performed a programme ranging from Bach to Kreisler and Komitas.
Space is the Place: an east west music dialogue
15 June 2019
The Boghossian Foundation presented Lagrange Points, an organization that enables Arab culture to enter into dialogue with Western culture through music, books and arts.
With Space is the Place: an east west music dialogue, Syrian singer and percussionist Khaled Alfahez and Dutch singer Sanne Rambags took the audience to a space inspired by Dutch poetry and the Sufi tradition of Aleppo, while Dutch guitarist Bram Stadhouders and Belgian bassist and composer Nathan Wouters mixed electronic music and jazz.
Our-Lady-of-Armenia Choir
9 July 2019
Created in 2005 by the Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, the Our-Lady-of-Armenia Choir performed at the Boghossian Foundation on the occasion of a remarkable European tour. Conducted by Maestro Robert Melkeyan, the thirty-two young talents performed a repertoire that mixed cultural influences from East and West, and Armenian and international classical composers, with hymns, Armenian liturgical compositions, and religious music by Komitas.
Istanbul Sketches
SOOLMAAN QUINTET
3 MARCH 2018
The Soolmaan Quintet brings together eclectic musical references influenced by Eastern and Western cultures. It is led by Tristan Driessens, a lutenist with an itinerant career, who creates music bearing the marks of Arab-Turkish makam, classical music and modal jazz. In addition to his longtime collaborator, the talented Robbe Kieckens, a rhythmic musician who masters a large number of instruments, we find in his quintet a sure value in the world of jazz, the multi-instrumentalist blower Tom Callens, the saxophonist Nathan Daems and the French cellist Léa Besancon.
Armenian Musical Weekend
2 AND 3 JUNE 2018
The Boghossian Foundation had the pleasure of welcoming the Armenian General Benevolent Union for a musical weekend combining classical music and jazz.
On Saturday evening, a Piano-Violin-Cello Trio reasoned in the Salon d’Honneur of the Villa Empain. The scores of Shostakovich, Rachmaninov or Babadjanian were masterfully interpreted by Varduhi Yeritsyan, a French-Armenian pianist with a vast and diversified repertoire, and the brothers Hrachya and Sevak Avanesyan. Sunday was dedicated to the jazz trio of Yessai Karapetyan, a Franco-Armenian pianist who has performed on the most prestigious jazz stages.
Wajd Ensemble
24 August 2017
Echoing the Foundation’s mission as a centre for dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures, the Muziekpublique Hide & Seek Festival took over the Villa Empain with the Wajd Ensemble.
Composed of four professional Syrian musicians who have found refuge in Belgium, the Wajd Ensemble offers a representative repertoire of Oriental sounds and brings classical Syrian music to life. For the musicians, originally from Aleppo, it is important to show the richness of Syrian culture and present musical works that are little played and little known, and which they interpret in their own way.
Alan Seeger: Instrument of Destiny
Oratorio by Patrick Zimmerli
2 December 2017
Conceived by the French director Mirabelle Ordinaire, with music by the American composer Patrick Zimmerli, the oratorio is based on the poems, letters, and diary entries of Alan Seeger, an American soldier who died at the front in 1918. There he wrote his most beautiful poems, letters and a diary that is both meticulously detailed and lucid about the atrocities of war.
At the crossroads of cultures, the oratorio draws a link between the Old and New Worlds and brings together French and American artists, blending the musical traditions emblematic of the two worlds: European opera and American jazz: tenor Scott Emerson, a men’s choir conducted by Loïc Pierre, jazz pianist Edouard Ferlet and percussionist Jean-Baptiste Leclère.
Music-loving Istanbul of the 19th century
Lâmekân Ensemble
4 February 2016
The Lâmekân Ensemble is a renowned international sextet that invites the Turkish and European listener to discover Ottoman classical music.
Through a repertoire that is both vocal and instrumental, the listener gets to know the palaces, taverns and other Sufi monasteries that favoured the meeting of musicians. The repertoire unfolds the multiple faces of an astonishingly rich urban culture, highlighting leading composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. With this programme, Lâmekân Ensemble aims to bring back to life the divergent places and spaces of Ottoman musical life during the last century of its history.
The Musical Orchard
Lux Beata
14 April 2016
Founded in 2014 by Fredrik Hildebrand, Lux Beata focuses on the viol in all its possible sizes and combinations. Its repertoire spans more than 500 years, with a particular attachment to 16th and 17th century Italian and Spanish music, contemporary, traditional or ethnic.
The concert conceived for the Villa Empain alternated ancient Armenian compositions and Italian baroque music, in a sensitive and historical dialogue.
The Silk Road
Osuna & Colette Dedyn
6 October 2016
The Boghossian Foundation hosted the inaugural evening of the Artonov Festival with a concert coupled with an artistic performance. With The Silk Route in Sounds, the Osuna trio took us on a musical journey to the Middle Ages, in the footsteps of Marco Polo. Three musical personalities met there: Thomas Baeté, medieval fiddle player and singer of troubadour lyrics, Emre Gültekin, saz-virtuoso, who grew up in the Anatolian music tradition, and Raphael Decock whose fascinating overtone-singing and chatkan-playing bring the steppes of Central Asia alive.
This new production was accompanied by a performance of the artist Colette Dedyn who chose sand as medium.
