Diary of an Immigrant

Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian whose projects range from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. She is a first-generation Armenian American whose family fled Turkey as a result of the Armenian genocide; her family was also directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War. She draws on her heritage to create her distinctive sounds and searches the folk histories of her ancestors’ homeland in order to use music as documentary. Her background in experimental composition allows her to join the old to the new effectively. A strong believer in freedom of speech who sees the arts as a way to enlarge the range of interpersonal expression, she creates musical works that often integrate recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite her audiences’ empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.

A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects/OPERA America, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the American Composers Forum, Roomful of Teeth, WQXR, REDSHIFT, Experiments in Opera, Helen Simoneau Danse, the Nouveau Classical Project, Music of Remembrance, Friction Quartet, Ensemble Oktoplus, and the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble, among others.

The New York Times has described her works as “eloquently scripted," "emotionally wracking,” and "politically fearless." In her work as a composer, orchestrator, and music editor for film, Kouyoumdjian has collaborated on a diverse array of motion pictures, including writing the original score for the documentary An Act of Worship (Capital K Pictures and PBS’ POV Docs) and orchestrating the soundtrack to The Place Beyond the Pines. Her upcoming projects include an album of her works with the Kronos Quartet and the West Coast premiere of her opera, Adoration, with the LA Opera in 2025.

Kouyoumdjian holds a D.M.A. and M.A. in composition from Columbia University, an M.A. in scoring for film and multimedia from New York University, and a B.A. in music composition from the University of California, San Diego. Dedicated to new music advocacy, Kouyoumdjian co-founded the annual new music conference called New Music Gathering; she also served as the founding executive director of contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant and as co-artistic director of Alaska's new music festival Wild Shore New Music.

Kouyoumdjian is on the composition faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and The New School; she has previously been on the faculty at Columbia University, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Brooklyn College's Feirstein School of Cinema, Mannes Prep, and the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program.

Composed in 2013, two years before the centennial of the Armenian genocide, Tagh (Diary) of an Immigrant is “an imagined journal entry by a hope-filled someone hungrily pushing towards immigration who finds themselves in strange and bittersweet stillness once that immigration is achieved.” The Armenian word tagh means “diary.” The brief work for two violins, viola, cello, and contrabass was commissioned by Ensemble Oktuplus and is also available as a work for string orchestra.