Tag: Joseph Bohigian

Categories
Concerts

Tactile Transmissions at Longy School of Music

Longy School of Music of Bard College

Ensemble Decipher will perform at Longy School of Music of Bard College’s Pickman Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Monday, February 22, 2027, at 7:00 pm, featuring Longy composition faculty Niloufar Nourbakhsh. The performance is free and open to the public, but please register in advance.

Ensemble Decipher builds instruments out of everyday objects. Every work on this program is about transmission and what gets warped along the way.

Rob Cosgrove’s Rhizome Music sends live drums through microphones into vintage radios and back into the acoustic instruments, building a hall of mirrors out of sound. Joseph Bohigian’s Stone Dreams attaches motion sensors to stones and transmits the data by radio, turning the stones themselves into the instrument. Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s Of Breath and Feeding Back takes up aging and the loss of youth. Erin Rogers’ Telegraph runs from homing pigeons to electrical telegraphy, with nonsense text passed between players while one performer mixes the room live.

Categories
Concerts

Decipher at Other Minds in San Francisco

Brava Theater

On October 8, 2026, Ensemble Decipher will give the world premiere of Joseph Bohigian’s I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment on the first night of the Other Minds Festival at the Brava Theater in San Francisco, California. I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment is an evening-length multimedia work about the life of the visionary Soviet-Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990) that combines the multilingual songs of the 18th century bard Sayat Nova in Armenian, Azeri, and Georgian with live electronic manipulation of recordings by South Caucasus folk musicians. The project is a collaboration with Bohigian, vocalist and duduk player Khatchadour Khatchadourian, and artists Tara Baghdassarian and Karo Yagjian. Tickets are available now from Other Minds.

This performance is made possible through generous support from the MAP Fund, Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Research Institute of the South Caucasus, Creative Armenia-AGBU, and New Music USA Creator Fund 2025–26.

Categories
News

Decipher Awarded MAP Fund Grant

I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment, 2024 MAP Grantee

Ensemble Decipher has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the MAP Fund to produce a new collaborative work with composer and decipherist Joseph Bohigian. The funded project is an evening-length multimedia work titled I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment about the life of the visionary Georgian-born Soviet-Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990), most well known for his 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates. The premiere of this new project will take place in 2026 at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, California.

Decipher will be joined for this project by Lebanese-Armenian vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian, a specialist in a variety of traditional Armenian musical genres, who will sing lyrics by the 18th century singer-poet Sayat Nova in three languages.

Categories
Concerts

Decipher Performs at New Music Gathering

NMG 2023 on light purple background with bright colored designs.

Ensemble Decipher will perform at the 2023 New Music Gathering at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. The concert on Friday, June 23, 2023 at 1:00 pm will include music by Mari Kimura, Lyn Goeringer, and Joseph Bohigian.