Levon Ichkhanian Official Website

A Song Is Born
Mitch Smolkin launches debut CD at Ashkenaz Festival

A collective of musicians assembled from around the world augments Mitch Smolkin’s powerful vocals. They include a striking diversity of talents, forging a broad range of cultural traditions from three continents. This includes the playing and vision of producer and guitarist Levon Ichkhanian, the inimitable duo of Marcelo Moguilevsky and Cesar Lerner from Buenos Aires, the multi-instrumental genius of British Columbia based Boris Sichon, the improvisatory flare of Berlin based trumpeter Paul Brody, and the vocals of Toronto based songstress Aviva Chernik.

Saturday August 30, 7:00 p.m., in the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door, available from the Harbourfront Centre box office at 416-973-4000 or online at www.harbourfrontcentre.com.

Maryem Tollar and Cairo-Toronto Collective

Glenn Gould Studio
JUNE 22 2008 - 8 pm
with special guest artists from Egypt:
oud and violin master Alfred Gamil
virtuoso vocalist, violin and oud player Mohamed Aly
And local guests:
Bassam Bishara - oud
Levon Ichkhanian - guitar
Debashis Sinha - percussion
Alan Hetherington - percussion

Alfred Gamil

Mohamed Aly

Matt Horner, Wilson Laurencin, Andrew Stewart & Levon

Levon Ichkhanian Quartet - Théâtre Jean-Duceppe - Place des Arts

photos by Katherine Calder Becker

backstage with Peppino D'Agostino

Click Here for More Godin Tribute Performance Picts

Feature article written by Levon based on his interviews with Sting's Dominic Miller, Billy Idol's Steve Stevens, Oscar Peterson's Ulf Wakenius, Chick Corea's Frank Gambale, Marc Anthony's Aaron Mclain . . .

From the depths of Middle-Earth….Levon Ichkhanian

interview by Karen Ages
By the time you read this, the new Mirvish Lord of the Rings will have been playing for about two weeks. The music is unusual in that it was composed by three “camps” so to speak: A.R. Rahman (India), the Finnish group Vårttinå and British composer Chris Nightingale, who put it all together. (Tolkien is thought to have been inspired by Finnish folk-epic the “Kalevala” for his story).

I spoke with Levon Ichkhanian, one of the musicians in the pit orchestra, itself an unusual combination of instruments and musical personalities. Levon is known to many as guitar side-man with many local and international musicians, including Maryem Tollar and Peter Murphy. Recently, he also travelled with Rings composer Rahman, one of India’s foremost film composers, on his “3D World Tour” of India, Singapore and the UK. “We started rehearsals in Chennai, where we learned 50 or 60 tunes from his movies. On tour, the singers were the actual singers from the soundtracks, whom you don’t actually see in the movies, as the actors are lip-syncing to them. There were many singers, dancers and musicians on stage for these shows, with images projected on huge screens behind them. The audience wore special glasses to get the 3D effect.”

Levon was born to Armenian parents in Beirut, Lebanon. Three of his uncles were guitarists and his father was the music director for many middle-eastern singers. He came to Canada at age 12, and played his first professional gig a year later. Since then (he’ll be 42 this month) he seems to have led a charmed life with many musical and creative opportunities coming his way. In addition to his three solo CDs, he has played on numerous commercial recordings, film soundtracks, (including scoring the music for one of Atom Egoyan’s early films) and has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe.

Of his most recent tour, with Rahman, “it was like going to heaven and back!” he says. “These singers could sing just one phrase and make you cry....getting to meet and hang out with esteemed musicians I’ve long admired, especially in India, and the travel component, and on top of that, getting paid for it all, it was like winning the lottery! The whole tour was like that, one great thing after another.”

And now down in the pit at the Princess of Wales, he’s excited by this new adventure. “I’m fascinated by the whole process, it’s my first time doing anything like this.” He’s part of the “folk band” component of the orchestra, which consists of himself on Celtic Bouzouki, Anne Lindsay (violin, nickel harp, jouhikko) and Sasha Luminsky (accordion). The rest of the orchestra consists of a multitude of percussion instruments, brass, strings, keyboards, and a variety of different flutes played by Les Alt. I asked him about the music itself, whether it was Rahman for some scenes, Vårttinå for others (the music was mainly composed by their bouzouki player), Nightingale, etc. “It’s very hard to answer”, says Levon. “The music has been truly married together; it’s kind of like looking at your kids and seeing a bit of yourself, your spouse, your mother-in-law etc. The music is a true hybrid and Chris Nightingale (orchestrator) had the challenge of putting it all together. We’ve got classical players, folk and jazz elements, all held together by conductor Rick Fox”.

I asked Levon if he’d had a chance to see any of the production. “Yes, sometimes in rehearsal we’d get a chance to go up into the theatre and watch, and it’s really something, the sets and effects are truly unbelievable! It’s like there’s this whole other world at the Princess of Wales theatre; when I go in there, the outside world is shut off and I’m suddenly in Middle-Earth; it’s such a living thing, and I’m having so much fun!”

For more about Levon Ichkhanian, visit his website: www.levonmusic.com

A celebration of music from the shores of the Mediterranean Performed on traditional stringed instruments: Oud, Bouzouki, Banjitar Levon Ichkhanian (plucked stringed instruments) Gordon Sheard (accordion) Ernie Tollar (woodwinds) Wilson Laurencin (percussion) Attila Darvas (contrabass)