Études Mélodiques (Deluxe) Marie Awadis

• Marie Awadis: Étude No. 1:
• 1 Awadis: Étude No. 1: Playing Games 04:11
• Étude No. 2:
• 2 Awadis: Étude No. 2: Breathless 04:05
• Étude No. 3:
• 3 Awadis: Étude No. 3: Ballade 03:24
• Étude No. 4:
• 4 Awadis: Étude No. 4: Empty Rooms 04:35
• Étude No. 5:
• 5 Awadis: Étude No. 5: Traces 03:56
• Étude No. 6:
• 6 Awadis: Étude No. 6: La Forêt Oubliée 06:13
• Étude No. 7:
• 7 Awadis: Étude No. 7: Exodus 03:04
• Étude No. 8:
• 8 Awadis: Étude No. 8: Through the Window 05:40
• Étude No. 9:
• 9 Awadis: Étude No. 9: Unspoken Words 05:46
• Étude No. 10:
• 10 Awadis: Étude No. 10: Void 03:58
• Étude No. 11:
• 11 Awadis: Étude No. 11: L’horloge des Rêves 06:10
• Étude No. 12:
• 12 Awadis: Étude No. 12: Unveiled 06:14
• Étude No. 5:
• 13 Awadis: Étude No. 5: Traces (Orchestral Version) 03:51
• Étude No. 7:
• 14 Awadis: Étude No. 7: Exodus (Orchestral Version) 03:17
• Marie Awadis, Christian Badzura: Étude No. 8:
• 15 Awadis, Badzura: Étude No. 8: Through the Window (C.B. Rework) 04:49
• Étude No. 1:
• 16 Awadis: Étude No. 1: Playing Games (CFCF Remix) 05:18
• Total Runtime 01:14:31

Info for Études Mélodiques (Deluxe)

Awadis’s works bridge the worlds of classical and contemporary music, combining Chopin with minimalism and Armenian flair.

A collection of 12 solo piano pieces written and performed by Awadis, Études Mélodiques reveals the artist’s unique and personal voice, a product of the diverse influences that enrich her music, from deeply rooted classical traditions to the folk harmonies and melodies of Armenia. It also reflects her determination to be true to herself, to strip away the surface of display and reveal the emotions that lie beneath.

Awadis’s twelfth étude seems to stand as a metaphor for the whole album, with each of the other eleven representing a step on the path towards it – a voyage through past experiences and emotions that culminates in a state of balance and peace. “Even though it’s the last of the Études, ‘Unveiled’ is where I began,” says Awadis. “At first I called it ‘Heart Wide Open’ because it captured the idea that I no longer wanted to hide away. Hard as it was, I knew I wanted to express myself and my feelings through my music. I felt compelled to compose – I was finally being true to who I am and following a path of authenticity.”

“I spent so long concealing my true artistic self,” she adds. “That’s because I was unsure where I belonged – my music is not typically classical or neoclassical or avant-garde; it’s something in between these things. I was not part of the mainstream and felt inadequate when I judged myself against the big names who were. But I continued because I knew this was what I had to do. Now that I look at the Études, the pieces that came before them and where my music is going, everything suddenly makes sense.”

Armenian by ancestry, Awadis grew up in Lebanon before moving to Germany to continue her musical studies. After a break from composing, she was gradually drawn back to the craft. As she worked on Études Mélodiques, she began to think of her new works as studies because they reminded her of Chopin’s études. She has related to his music since childhood and calls him and Bach her “musical home”, while also exploring minimalism, a more recent but equally influential discovery.

“For me,” she explains, “the ideal way to compose is to combine my own intuitive approach with the rhythmic precision of American minimalism, the spirituality of European minimalism and the emotions of Armenian music. Because that’s me – I’m an Armenian-Lebanese-German combination.”

An earlier work by Marie Awadis (“Day V” from Una Corda Diaries) is one of six tracks that make up the score of choreographer Jennifer Archibald’s new ballet, ByCHANCE. Coinciding with the release of Études Mélodiques, the world premiere will be given by SMUIN Contemporary Ballet at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, Mountain View, California, on 13 September, with further performances following in Walnut Creek and San Francisco until 20 October 2024.

Marie Awadis, piano

Marie Awadis
Armenian composer and pianist Marie Awadis, born in Lebanon and now based in Germany, is known for her intimate, elegantly crafted music and sensitive sound. Centred around the piano, her works aim to express authentic human emotion and draw on the many musical and non-musical influences that have shaped her as an artist, from deeply rooted classical traditions to the folk harmonies and melodies of Armenia.

Deeply committed to composition, she is always eager to explore new paths and combine all her cultural experiences in order to produce work that is as honest and personal as possible. Her creativity is the energy that drives her onwards, informed by her optimistic nature and by the spiritual side of her personality.

Her first collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon dates from 2021, when she contributed the track Alone to the third series of the label’s pioneering contemporary music series “XII”. Awadis has now recorded her debut DG album, Études Mélodiques, a collection of twelve poetic studies for piano. Inspired not only by Chopin but by the contrasting strands of American and European minimalism, Études Mélodiques will be released in September 2024.

Marie Awadis’s grandparents escaped the Armenian genocide for Syria in 1915. Her father later moved to Lebanon, establishing a life for himself among the country’s large Armenian diaspora. Marie absorbed the language and culture of her ancestral homeland at Armenian school while growing up amid civil war in the Lebanon of the late 1970s and 80s. She first went on stage at the age of five, singing with her father’s folk band. Music became a passion and a refuge, and she began taking piano lessons when she was eight. She focused on the classical repertoire, including composers from Bach to Rachmaninoff, and gave solo performances as well as playing chamber music, accompanying choirs and taking part in studio projects. Her curiosity about all genres led her to explore jazz and world music, both of which would have a major impact on her composition style in years to come.

Awadis went on to study at the Lebanese National Conservatory in Beirut. After graduating in piano performance and teaching at the conservatory for three years, she moved to Hanover to pursue postgraduate studies at the city’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater. During her years at the college, she was invited to perform the Schumann Piano Concerto with the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra.

After this, she moved away from classical piano for a while, but found her way back to it through Armenian classical and traditional music when she started performing solo piano works by various Armenian composers. She now gives concerts in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and has collaborated with a number of different artists both on stage and in the studio.

Having written her first piano piece at the age of sixteen, Awadis rediscovered her passion for composing later in life, when she realised she needed new forms of expression that would enable her to tell her own story in her own way, to reconnect with the space in which she felt safest and to express her feelings in the language of music, a refuge of peace ever since her childhood in a war-torn country. Today, music is her homeland, providing connections to the Armenian, Lebanese and German cultures, all three of which have shaped her life and work.

During the period of transition between performing and composing, she wrote further pieces for solo piano and several works for cello and piano; these were followed by compositions for string quartet and other chamber ensembles, and by choral works. As her career as a composer continues to flourish, she feels strongly that music flows through rather than from her, and that once the notes are on the page they are no longer hers. She begins with a myriad of ideas and improvisations, gradually creating order from compositional chaos. Structure grows out of intuition and emotion, although as a lover of architecture both generally and in the musical sphere, she aspires one day to find a way of applying her intuitive method to initial structural foundations.

Marie Awadis’s previous releases include the albums Echoes (2015), Searching (2017) and Una Corda Diaries (2020), written especially for the unique Klavins Concert Una Corda M189 and recorded on the instrument in Budapest. An EP entitled LUYS, a vocal experiment recorded during the pandemic, came out in November 2023.

This album contains no booklet.