Tigran Hamasyan Wins Thelonious Monk Institute’s International Jazz Piano Competition
Nineteen-year old piano prodigy Tigran Hamasyan – who so many of you know as Wayne’s pianist for the last year – this weekend WON the Thelonious Monk
International Jazz Competition. Here’s what Ben Ratliff wrote in the NY Times:
“the heavy-duty contest judges were Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill …. The winner was Tigran Hamasyan, a 19-year old Armenian pianist currently studying at the University of Southern California …. His performances, in both the semifinals and the finals, were intensely searching, and stubborn in their intuitive force: jazz, for him, is about constantly moving around the rhythmic accents in a piece of music so that nearly every bar seems to be in a different time signature from the last.”
Read more and see a photo of Tigran tearing it up at this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/arts/music/19monk.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
You will hear Tigran on the score for next year’s feature-length documentary “The Narcotics Farm” as well as on Wayne’s next record “Lexington.”
Wayne’s Pianist Wins Thelonius Monk Competition
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