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hovhaness-conducting
January 17 2014

Some Memories of Alan Hovhaness

timothyjohnson Blog

I was cleaning out my filing cabinet the other day

or, rather, I was thinking about cleaning it out and remembered I had a press kit from the concert the Armenian Prelacy organized for Alan Hovhaness in honor of his 80th birthday.   I was studying with him at the time and brashly asked him if I could tag along.  I don’t know why, but he said yes.  It was 1991 and the concert was at Carnegie Hall – I had never been to New York.  This was over 20 years ago and my memory of the trip is a bit fuzzy – although the press kit has jarred some memories loose – so I’ll try to tell you a few things i do remember.

Hovhaness Program
Front of the concert program

A Symphony had been commissioned

for the concert by the Armenian Apostolic Church of America.  I was able to see the piece – bits at a time – while he was composing, talk to him about it, and then see it performed.  I have a discarded page of a sketch from this piece in the pic gallery below.

I remember meeting Karel Husa

and thinking he was a very dynamic personality.  Luckily – and quite by accident – I had been studying one of his scores, I think it was Two Sonnets by Michelangelo, so I had something to ramble about.

I got to go to all the rehearsals

at the rehearsal hall downtown and at Carnegie.  Walking around the floor in Carnegie listening to orchestra rehearse was a pretty amazing.  When they were rehearsing – I think it was Armenian Rhapsody No. 1,  – there was a question on a particular passage and a bit of discussion about how it should be played.  Alan wasn’t there and I don’t remember if they called him at the hotel or exactly what, but after a few minutes someone spoke up and and said “Hovhaness would like us to follow our intuition.”  This was so typical of Alan – it is the most important thing he ever taught me.

In the press kit I found a notehovhaness1

from Alan that always makes me smile.  I had shared with him that, when I was growing up, my father was in the Air Force and for a few years we were stationed in Adana, Turkey.  Alan, for some reason, felt this was a connection between us – contrary to, and despite, the well known tensions between Armenia and Turkey.  But he always got it mixed up – thinking I had been born there and/or had some Turkish blood.  Hinako, his wife, kept trying to set the story straight by reminding him that I was “too white to be near eastern.”

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

hovhaness2
hovhaness3
hovhaness4
tim-in-the-90s
hovhaness5


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