Phenotypic Recordings releases Kronos Quartet’s new portrait album featuring the works of Pulitzer Prize-nominated Armenian-American composer and documentarian Mary Kouyoumdjian. Witness is Kouyoumdjian’s first portrait album and exemplify her use of the arts as an amplifier of expression, often integrating testimonies from resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy. Kouyoumdjian’s work seeks to humanize complex experiences around social and political conflict...

Witness is a beautifully reflective, emotional album that sees the Kronos Quartet deliver three melancholic works, spread over 9 tracks (1 hr, 01 min, 33 sec).

Reflecting on the album, Armenian-Canadian filmmaker (and Kouyoumdjian’s frequent collaborator) Atom Egoyan says: "This collection is an open letter to the tragic hymn of transmitted trauma and the possibility of art and magnificently gifted artists to help create new life."

The album opens with a reimagining of an Armenian folk song 'Groung' ['Crane']. This is a piece that has been interpreted by many in the past. Composer Komitas Vardapet produced a version of 'Groung', which had become an anthem for the Armenian diaspora. There is also a 1917 recording performed by Zabelle Panosian (1891-1986), which inspired Kouyoumdjian: "Panosian was a relatively unknown singer who had moved to Harlem, NY from her village of Bardizag, now a part of Western Turkey. In this song, the singer calls out to a crane, pleading for news from their homeland. Panosian’s voice seems to carry the burden of her entire homeland with a heart-achingly beautiful interpretation of the melody, and in my own arrangement, the ensemble is asked to emulate her unique interpretation of the song. At the time Panosian recorded this piece in the United States, her family and the Armenians were going through genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and I find the timing of her recording to bring even more meaning to the music."

'Bombs of Beirut' is dedicated to Kouyoumdjian’s family. The audio playback includes recorded interviews with family and friends who shared their various experiences living in a time of war; it also presents sound documentation of bombings and attacks on civilians, tape-recorded on an apartment balcony between 1976–1978. Kouyoumdjian says: "Inspired by loved ones who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, it is my hope that 'Bombs of Beirut' provides a sonic picture of what day-to-day life is like in a turbulent Middle East - not filtered through the news and media, but through the real words of real people."

'Silent Cranes,' is a music-documentary work marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, once again it is also inspired by the Armenian folk song 'Groung', in which the singer calls out to the migratory bird, begging for word from their homeland, only to have the crane respond with silence and fly away. This work includes testimonies by genocide survivors, recordings from the genocide era of Armenian folk songs, and a poem from investigative journalist David Barsamian in response to the question: Why is it important to talk about the Armenian Genocide 100 years later?

Phenotypic Recordings will donate all streaming proceeds from the album to Kooyrigs and the Lebanese Red Cross to support the Armenian and Lebanese communities.

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Darren Rea