Music Toronto: Laren Ouzounian and Lembit Beecher “Mayrig (Mother)”

*Music Toronto: Laren Ouzounian and Lembit Beecher “Mayrig (Mother)”*

Cellist Karen Ouzounian, acclaimed for her work with the Silkroad Ensemble and the Aizuri Quartet, joins composer-pianist Lembit Beecher to close the season’s MUSE series with Mayrig, an immersive multimedia program centred on the human voice.

Voices of Ouzounian’s mother and grandmother weave through Armenian music from Anatolia, songs of Lebanon, and the music of Charles Aznavour, alongside new works exploring memory, heritage, and resilience across generations.

The program spans centuries and cultures, opening and closing with Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines. Traditional Armenian songs and early Anatolian recordings appear alongside arrangements of music by Charles Aznavour and Ashot Satyan. Original works by Lembit Beecher are joined by contemporary voices including Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Karen Ouzounian, interwoven with recorded voices from Ouzounian’s family. Blending voice, memory, and music, Mayrig unfolds as a deeply human meditation on identity, inheritance, and the passage of time.