The “Malkhas” style finds a jazz home in Yerevan....

By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Published: 17 February, 2006
Perhaps the best description of Yerevan’s newest jazz venue was handed out by a local’s first time visit:
“I can’t believe I’m in Armenia,” said the music fan, who has the benefit of perspective from having lived abroad.

With the opening of Malkas Jazz Club, the city finally has a jazz hall with quality to match the fine musicianship that most often here is found in places less professional that the music it offers.

In Yerevan’s newest music venue, jazz has a beginning, but no end.

At Malkhas Jazz Club, time is lost in a labyrinth of improvisation and in the dream of the “Godfather of Armenian Jazz” Levon Malkhasyan.

It is a dream 46 years in the making – since Malkhasyan at age 15 heard piano icon Oscar Peterson and has ever since lived his life for jazz.

“This is not a restaurant with jazz accompaniment; jazz is in the first place here, and then comes the business. That is why the club is closed to visitors in day time,” says Malkhasyan.

It is closed for food and drink during the day, but is open to jazz lovers as a library. The club has some 1,000 books about jazz and world renowned jazzmen, more than 2,000 jazz recordings and DVDs available to any jazz lover in the club.

Also during the day, Malkhas opens his stage for young musicians who have no place to rehearse.

“A place to rehearse has always been a problem - in our times and now,” says Malkhasyan, a beloved jazzman and something a fixture of the Yerevan scene. “I close the club from the morning till 4 p.m. so that the young musicians rehearse. There will be opportunity for recording in the future.”

Malkhas says the jazz club has its rules, according to which it is first of all an educational center and not a café. The club should have a library, disc library and a musical kiosk.

Malkhas Jazz Club is at the moment unique in Armenia in its conformity to these unwritten but strict rules.

“I would very much like other clubs of this type to open and I must encourage it, help, for it will largely facilitate the development of jazz art in Armenia,” says the veteran pianist.

The club itself is decorated with a mixture of classic and modern styles; the contrast of dark wood and colorful fancy stained glass create relaxing and at the same time cheerful atmosphere.

And this is not a club for the faint of pocket. Prices are set to match the surroundings. For example, a glass of beer that might cost 350 drams (about 80 cents) in other places costs twice that at Malkas. Visitors are also charged 2,000 drams (about $4.50) for the music, a practice not imposed even at the city’s most popular club, Poplovak.

In the pure sense of spontaneity, schedules are not a priority at the club, which opened just after the New Year. The only thing fixed is the time of opening – 9 p.m. – then everything goes as irregularly as the wind of improvisation.

But this is no “open mic” house, either. If you’re going to jam at Malkhas’ club, your chops had better be sharp – able to travel with musicians such as Time Report, a collection of some of Yerevan’s finest talent. Saxophone player Armen Hyusnunts, piano player Khachatur Sahakyan and Yamaha-award-winning percussionist Aram Jalalyan perform pure ethno-jazz, improvisations of Armenian traditional melodies, unique arrangements of Komitas and Sayat-Nova.

City favorite Vahagn Hayrapetyan with his Trio and “The Cats” septet play various jazz –from traditional jazz to jazz-rock, world-beat and ethno-jazz.

And finally one can enjoy of course Malkhasyan and his piano improvisations that have come to define his own “Malkhas” style.

A library by day transforms into pure jazz at night

He is a musician who never learned notes, just listened and played.

“I collected 230 records of Oscar Peterson’s with much difficulties and they became my school, my college and my conservatory. Jazz after all is not a thing you learn. If you have the gift of feeling than you have it, if you don’t, you could as well be a graduate of all the conservatories in the world but you will never play jazz,” says Malkhas.

If anyone told Levon Malkhasyan 45 years ago he would have a jazz club, he would consider him mad. Those were times when finding a record was a big problem and finding a book about jazz was a problem even bigger, than say, meeting Duke Ellington in America.

But it was in those difficult years when the Armenian jazz bands – the Jazz band of Armenia under Artemy Aivazyan, Konstantin Orbelyan, the first jazz quartet created by Malkhas were renowned across the Soviet Union – only there, because they were strictly prohibited from leaving for abroad.

“Jazz was in real blossom. Then suddenly a coupe, an earthquake and everything seemed ended. In bad years more than 25 good jazzmen left Armenia and it seemed as if we would not have jazz even if everything improves,” says Malkhas.

He says there are better musicians today; the only thing the Armenian jazz lost is its queen. After Tatevik Hovhannisyan her place remains vacant and Malkhas hopes his club will periodically be inviting musicians from abroad and the master classes will help restore the loss.
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