“Andouni“ (Homeless) - Isabel Bayrakdarian and the Komitas String Quartet ()

“Andouni“ is composed by Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935), a composer, musicologist and the founder of modern Armenian classic music. Komitas’s life was spared through the intervention of a group of influential friends during the Armenian Genocide in 1915, but he lived to see everyone he loved to die in the Genocide. Komitas had never recovered from the emotional shock. He died in a psychiatric mental institute in Paris. Every year on April 24, Armenians gather at “Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial“ at Yerevan, Armenia to remember the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide that took place in the Ottoman Empire carried out by the Turkish government. “Tsitsernakaberd“ (Ծիծեռնակաբերդ) means “Fortress of Small Swallows.“ There are also many memorials dedicated to Armenian genocide in other countries, that including more than 30 such memorials in France alone. The “Tsitsernakaber