“I sing to move your hearts”- that is how Berge Turabian dedicated to me the copy of his first album “Somewhere & Someday.” It arrived like a long expected promise, where, through his own lyrics and compositions, he expresses the songs of his heart, unfolding its most profound secrets, whispering to us words of love and devotion. He could not do otherwise: writing songs is in his nature, the compulsion of his soul. I heard songs of intangible anguish, boundless nostalgia and ethereal dreaming. They were the songs of an unrestrained spirit, indifferent to everyday comfort and free of bourgeois conventions, who can spend sleepless nights under the open sky weaving dreams.

Therein lies his connection to a kindred spirit with whom he would have gladly shared his thoughts and musings. For Berge Turabian, this second CD is the journey where he meets someone he would have liked as a friend, the beloved poet Yeghishé Charents. The poet and the songwriter, two friends full of passion and dreams conjure up songs of “the blessed love and bread,” songs of the Milky Way and blue horizon. They sing in harmony, glorifying the immortality of love and life. These songs envelop the soul with a transparent sorrow. They vibrate with the emotional intensity intrinsic to the lyricism of Charents. They are romantic, sometimes nostalgic, with impressionistic nuances true to the spirit of Charents’ symbolism. The secret of their appeal is in the harmony between the essence of Charents’ poetry and Turabian’s musical interpretation.

Having said that, the most valuable aspect of this album is that the music is thoroughly Armenian in character. “The ancient sorrow of Nairi,” quintessential to Charents’ poetry, has found true expression in Turabian’s songs. The deep feeling of sadness inherent to Armenian artistic conception permeates all of these songs.

Turabian’s composition and performance capture the associative and sensual expression of Charents’ poetry, as well as its inherent sonority. It is sometimes expressed in the ominous blast of the “Wind,” so real you feel it passing through your hair; sometimes in the notes of an old fashioned and ironic tango from which rises “The Elegant Miss L.” They are all expressed in modern musical instrumentation and refined orchestration. The music acquires hues from the palette of Charents, sometimes it becomes blue, it condenses and becomes rainbow-colored, then becomes transparent, as in “The Girl like a lampshade,” finally exploding in a “Feast” of body and soul.
In these songs, there is boundless sadness, longing and yearning: the splendid, but inaccessible charm of unreal worlds, the enticement of unreal loves, parting words, the hope of a chance meeting and the belief in infinite love in terrestrial life. Listening to these songs, a quatrain from Charents’ late poetry comes to mind:
        Like the song of Verlaine,
        With an old assonance,
        In my soul again
        Is the same grievance.

Yes, it is that same grievance in the songs of Berge Turabian which fills us with love and sadness ... and stirs our souls just as he promised.
         Listen to my songs ... writes the poet,
        Listen to my songs ... sings the songwriter,

and, if we have the art of listening, they charm us like a quaint street lantern, charm and enchant us like the golden smile of a Chance passerby.

Anahit Charents
Amsterdam, 1999