Album review: The layers of Arsenyan’s “Stratum”

In the Weekly’s latest interview with Hayk Arsenyan, the pianist-composer spoke of life not as a ladder of achievements but as a river. He described a fluid current that carries us to different shores — some beautiful, some rugged and some that we simply must survive. His latest release from Navona Records, “Stratum,” feels like a deep dive into that very current. It is a work that refuses to stay on the surface and instead explores the sediment of memory, the weight of fatherhood and the “flavors” of an identity that cannot be erased. The digital single, which officially dropped in February, features Arsenyan on piano alongside his longtime friend and collaborator, bassist Matt Hare. Friends of 25 years, their story is a moving diaspora tale: two students who met at the University of Iowa, then drifted to opposite coasts — Hare to California and Arsenyan to New York — and eventually found their way back to one another through the language they know best. The backstory of “Stratum” is perhaps the most moving part of Arsenyan’s recent artistic output. As Arsenyan recounted during our conversation, the piece grew out of a series of missed connections and digital pings. While he was in California for a televised concert, Hare reached out after learning his old friend was only 10 minutes away. Because of the hectic pace of professional life and the demands of young families, they could not meet in person. Yet that distance sparked a creative fire. Hare, who saw Arsenyan perform his own compositions for the first time, asked for a commission. “I didn’t even know you were a composer,” Hare texted. Arsenyan initially agreed but immediately felt the weight of the task. Then, while he was hesitating, came the text that changed everything: Hare’s father had passed away. “At that moment, it clicked,” Arsenyan said. He wasn’t just writing a piece for a friend. Arsenyan was already navigating his own mourning following the death of his grandmother. “We connect with other people’s love through our own,” he reflected. “You can mourn someone you never met if you understand that bond.” Ten years after the initial premiere, as Hare was finishing the orchestral arrangement of the work, Arsenyan’s own father died. The work was then dedicated to the elder Arsenyan. It is a staggering thought: two fathers, one American and one Armenian, who never spoke a word to each other in life, now eternally linked through 16 minutes of music. “Our dads never met,” Arsenyan said, “but through this work, they became friends.” The title “Stratum” refers to layers of rock or sediment, and the music mimics this geological slow build. It is a dense, textured soundscape that avoids the clichés of “sad” music. Instead, it opts for something more honest: complexity. The piece begins with Matt Hare’s bass, which provides a dark, rich bedrock. Hare is a master of the instrument who uses the power to move from deep, melancholic sounds to virtuosic passages. His lines feel like the earth itself: heavy, ancient and deeply rooted. Arsenyan’s piano enters as a countervoice, described in the catalog notes as an “ethereal splash of beauty.” If the bass is the earth, the piano is the light that hits the stone. Arsenyan’s touch is delicate, yet there is structural steel behind it. The two instruments engage in a dialogue of beautiful polyrhythmic phrases that create a sense of constant movement. What makes this work uniquely Armenian, however, is not a superficial use of folk tunes. Arsenyan was adamant during our interview that he avoids using direct folk melodies. “In anything I compose, the melodies and rhythms just turn out to be Armenian,” he explained. “I cannot control it, and I do not want to.” In “Stratum”, you can feel the ghost of the Armenian medieval tradition. The lyrical lines carry the “flavor” of our highlands, a specific type of longing that is as much about resilience as it is about sorrow. The influence of his teacher, Kirill Volkov — himself a student of Aram Khachaturian  — is felt in the way Arsenyan balances formal classical structures with raw emotional power. “Stratum” is a treasure trove of extended techniques. Both performers push their instruments to the brink to find new sonorities. As Arsenyan plucks the piano strings, the movement creates a haunting diminuendo — a fading sound that mimics the distant tolling of Armenian church bells. It is a chilling effect that evokes a funeral procession moving slowly into the fog of history. This search for the “perfect” sound is something Arsenyan has grappled with his entire life, from the Tchaikovsky School in Yerevan to his recent recordings on the Steinway Spirio piano. During his conversation with the Weekly, Arsenyan mused on the difference between the “immortal” recording and the “exclusive” live moment. While recording allows for a booklike experience, where the listener can return to a phrase and “reread” it, nothing replaces the live stage. “Stratum” manages to bridge that gap. Even as a digital single, it retains a “live” urgency. You can hear the breath of the performers and the tension in the strings. It feels less like a studio product and more like a captured ritual. The catalog for the release quotes Lord Byron: “And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.” This sentiment anchors the entire experience of listening to “Stratum.” It is a 16-minute meditation on the fact that we do not truly “get over” our losses. Instead, we add them to our foundation. They become part of our stratum. Arsenyan’s philosophy of the river is the final layer here. He said he doesn’t believe in global, project-scale goals. He doesn’t want to move a stone to artificially change the direction of his life’s path. He simply wants to stay alive in the current and see where the water takes him. In “Stratum,” the water has taken him somewhere profound. He has moved from the strict classical training of the Gnesin Academy in Moscow to the “outside-the-box” experimentalism of some of the most daring places in New York. He has taken the pain of the 1990s — a time he describes as “horribly difficult” for his family in Yerevan — and transformed it into a career defined by full scholarships and international prestige. For those of us in the diaspora, Arsenyan’s work is a mirror. It shows us that while we may move across the globe, leave violins in Armenia and pick up pianos in Paris, we carry our landscape in our hands. “Stratum” is a masterpiece of memory. It is a reminder that while our loved ones may leave us, their stories and friendships continue to vibrate in the music we make. Hayk Arsenyan has given us more than just a single; he has given us a piece of a man’s soul. It is a work that demands to be heard and then heard again, until we manage to dig deeper into our own layers and the pains and joys of those around us. The post Album review: The layers of Arsenyan’s “Stratum” appeared first on The Armenian Weekly.