We have finally been able to reschedule our covid-postponed February concert with the “entrancing and dazzlingly unique” Zela Margossian and her ARIA Award-nominated Quintet (‘ZMQ’). The concert will follow (and undoubtedly benefit from) a one-week Artists-in-Residence stay for Zela and her musicians with our partner Four Winds.
The Zela Margossian Quintet created a sensation in late 2018 with its extraordinary debut album, Transition. Critics and audiences alike were captivated by Zela’s intriguing compositions, by her seamless fusion of music from the classical, Armenian, Middle Eastern and jazz traditions and by the band’s masterful interplay. It is telling that two of the world’s leading jazz journals, Downbeat and JazzWise, chose to review this debut album.
The album’s title references Margossian’s extended transition from her classical music training to jazz via Armenian ‘ethno-jazz’. Her compositions also ‘tell stories’ from her life journey through three countries and cultures – Lebanon, Armenia and, finally, Australia.
Three years later, Zela and her Quintet have consolidated their reputation with their February 2022 release of a second enthusiastically received album, The Road. As the title implies, the album continues their musical journey.
Zela says “my music is a story of who I am”. Her story begins in Beirut, where she was born to Armenian refugee parents during Lebanon’s civil war. Her fourth birthday present was a piano and, she says, “I can’t remember a day since when music wasn’t a part of my life”. She went on to study classical piano performance in Beirut and then at post-graduate level in Yerevan, the capital of her parent’s homeland.
During her five years at Yerevan’s Conservatorium Zela also discovered, then “fell in love with”, a very different genre – a popular ‘ethno-jazz’ fusion of Armenian folk music and jazz. It was to become her main source of inspiration and it led her to step away from her classical music career aspirations.