Vocalist Composer Astghik Martirosyan is proud to present her debut album, Distance — an artistic
statement born of intense reflection on the relationship between present and past, self and
nation, one’s inner emotional life and the call of homeland. Martirosyan wrote the music in
2020 while experiencing a stark duality: tremendous artistic growth and fulfillment at New
England Conservatory in Boston, gut-wrenching news from an Armenia embroiled in a 44-
day war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the status of the Artsakh (Nagorno-
Karabakh) region. This was during the pandemic as well, giving the title Distance another
fraught layer of meaning. “All these emotions were happening,” Martirosyan recalls. “I was
experiencing it at a distance, by myself, far from my family and my country, and all of this
came out in the music. This was my way of trying to heal, hope and dream, but also to
express real sorrow. I lost friends in that war, I have friends who lost their homes. Music
was my outlet.”

The album features Vardan Ovsepian on piano, Darek Oleszkiewicz on bass, Christian Euman on drums, Daniel Rotem on tenor saxophone, and Maksim Velichkin on cello.