Workshop performance by Khatchadour Khatchadourian and Ensemble Decipher​

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Instrumentation: Voice, Duduk, Electronics Ensemble, and Video Projections

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Duration: 75:00

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Premiere: October 8, 2026 - Khatchadour Khatchadourian and Ensemble Decipher - Other Minds Festival, San Francisco, CA

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Program Notes:

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“I am he whose life and soul are torment,” is an English translation, by way of Armenian, of a line from an Azeri song by Sayat-Nova, the famed 18th century Armenian ashugh, or bard, who sang in Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, and Farsi. The Armenian version, “Էն մարդն իմ, ում կինքն ու հոգին տանջանք է,” is the opening line of avant-garde Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates, a symbolic biography of Sayat-Nova. I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment explores Parajanov’s inner world, as the filmmaker does for Sayat-Nova in The Color of Pomegranates. The sentiment expressed in the film’s opening line could apply to Parajanov as well as it does to Sayat-Nova, with whom the filmmaker felt an affinity.

 

Parajanov and Sayat-Nova share a good deal of biographical similarities. Both were born in Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia) to Armenian parents. Both made work in the three neighboring languages of their native South Caucasus region: Armenian, Azeri, and Georgian. Both were removed from their artistic positions by their patrons—for Sayat-Nova, King Erekle II, who removed him from the Georgian court, and for Parajanov, the Soviet state, which imprisoned him three times.

 

In I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment, Parajanov’s life from Georgia to Russia, Ukraine, and Armenia is portrayed via Sayat-Nova’s multilingual poetry. Sayat-Nova’s extant Armenian songs, still sung in Armenia today, are combined with newly composed ones set to his lyrics in Azeri and Georgian, whose original melodies have been lost. The opening of the piece sets a Sayat-Nova poem in four languages: Georgian, Farsi, Azeri, and Armenian. Although these languages are rarely mixed today, in Sayat-Nova’s time, they would have been widely understood in the Georgian court. The poem stands as an example of Sayat-Nova’s role as a cultural bridge builder, a role shared by Parajanov, who made significant contributions to the film cultures of Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

 

Visually, the work borrows from Parajanov’s tableau style reminiscent of medieval Armenian and Persian miniature painting. Scenes filmed at locations in Georgia and Armenia significant to Parajanov’s life and work are projected behind the performers, who become actors in the scenes. Ritualistic movements from his films are reenacted by the performers who, via motion sensors or manipulation of objects, control electronic sound through their motions. The electronics sample recordings by the Sayat Nova Project, an ethnomusicological recording initiative, of a multitude of cultures from across the South Caucasus. Represented are Azeri, Lezgin, Georgian, Armenian, Molokan, and Tushetian musicians.

 

Sergei Parajanov was born on January 9, 1924, in Tiflis, the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. He was educated at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, where, in 1951, he married his first wife, Nigyar Seraeva, who was soon after killed by relatives who objected to the marriage. Three years earlier he had been arrested in Tbilisi on charges of homosexuality and spent several months in jail. In 1952, Parajanov moved to Ukraine, where he married, and later divorced, Svetlana Shcherbatiuk and had a son, Suren. It was in Ukraine that Parajanov made his cinematographic breakthrough with his 1965 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The film vividly depicts Ukrainian Hutsul culture, and the trouble caused with the Soviet government by its association with Ukrainian nationalism foreshadowed the issues Parajanov would face in his filmmaking throughout his career.

 

Parajanov’s next major film was his 1969 Armenian-language work The Color of Pomegranates, filmed in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The film cemented his legacy as a great avant-garde filmmaker, but was met with censorship by the Soviet government for his poetic biographical treatment of Sayat-Nova, not to mention his departure from the tenets of Socialist Realism. Parajanov was imprisoned twice more, from 1974–77 and again in 1982, on politically motivated charges, partially in response to a speech he delivered in Minsk criticizing the Soviet film bureaucracy. During this period, in which he was prevented from making films, Parajanov turned to visual art, bringing his signature surreal collage style to a new medium. Upon his release from prison in 1982, Parajanov returned to filmmaking with his 1985 Georgian film The Legend of Suram Fortress and his 1988 Azerbaijani film Ashik Kerib.

 

In 1988, as a reflection on the places that shaped him, Parajanov stated, “Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I’m going to die in Armenia.” True to his word, he died of lung cancer on July 20, 1990, in Yerevan, the Armenian capital.

 

Parajanov once said of The Color of Pomegranates that he intended the film “to reveal the culture of the three peoples of Transcaucasia.” I hope that, in a time of nationalism and war, this work can contribute toward a path of cultural reintegration that engenders recognition of shared roots and a shared humanity.

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Electronic music by Joseph Bohigian
Song melodies by Sayat-Nova, Khatchadour Khatchadourian and Joseph Bohigian

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Lyrics by Sayat-Nova (1712–1795)

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Art direction by Tara Baghdassarian

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Costumes by Karo Yagjian

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Video projections by Gizy Amirejibi and Blue Kalamian

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Samples of recordings by the Sayat Nova Project from Mountains of Tongues used with permission of Living Music Duplication.

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I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment was supported by the MAP Fund, Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Research Institute of the South Caucasus, Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellowship, and New Music USA Creator Fund 2025–26.

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