paul chaderjian

- 11 Degrees of Love with zero degrees of separation by Paul Chaderjian A few years before the start of the devastating Civil War in Lebanon - when the Paris of Middle East, the jewel of a city, Beirut, was the capital of the Armenian Diaspora - two young college students named Seta Harboyan and Hratch Simonian, barely 20, began a legacy – perhaps unknowingly. Their legacy will be celebrated this weekend, once again, with the release of their daughter's debut record album, 11 Degrees of Love. > Back story From 1972 to 1976, Seta and Hratch hosted and produced the daily Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society radio program called "Haygagan Radiojam." With the then-modern and now-ancient reel-to-reel recorders, the couple - not yet a couple then - would wheel their dinosaur recording machine to Armenian elementary schools, record choirs, conduct interviews and rebroadcast them on Lebanese national radio. One afternoon, I stared at these celebrities with...

Jazz singer releases two new albums by Paul Chaderjian YEREVAN – In the dark of an Armenian winter’s night, the temperature has dipped to below freezing. Rooftops are covered with a blanket of snow, sheets of ice coat sidewalks, and a low cloud embraces the city in a light fog. While most Yerevanis are asleep in their warm beds, Armenia’s most endearing male vocalist is wide awake. Meet Arthur Ispirian. Musician. Singer. Composer. Popular performer. Award winner. By day, Ispirian is the music program coordinator for the Cafesjian Center for the Arts. At night, he dials up his muses and dedicates at least four hours to writing, recording and producing albums, which are loved in Armenia and throughout the Diaspora. “My interest in music started when I was ten,” says Ispirian. “My father brought home a stereo system with a turntable, and I began collecting the music that spoke to my heart.” Among the illegal vinyl records Ispirian collected and spent hours listenin...

* Filmmaker Tamar Salibian goes behind the curtains with Beautiful Armenians by Paul Chaderjian Tamar Salibian set out to make a documentary about how 20- and 30-something Armenians dealt with being Armenians in America, how they felt about issues like marrying non-Armenians, and how they connected to their cultural heritage. When the 30-year-old finished her documentary, Beautiful Armenians, she had given birth to a much more personal film. “It became personal,” she says, “because my connection to the culture is very personal. I'm not involved in the Armenian community, per se. I don't go to events so much, but my connection is through my family and through memory.” The exploration of her personal connection to her culture took Tamar to Europe, the Middle East, and the homeland. She interviewed her grandmother, cousins, and friends to figure out how those close to her were connected to the culture to which she was connected through them. From 30 hou...

* * Online entertainment magazine logs 4 million hits a month * * By Paul Chaderjian April 7, 2007 Hollyscoop.com is one of the hottest entertainment news sites in the world. With more than 4 million hits a month, Diana Magpapian, Nora Gasparian, and Ani Esmailian bring readers up-to-the-minute entertainment news, inside scoops, video reports, and exclusive photos from the hottest spots in the world of entertainment. The Armenian Reporter's Paul Chaderjian asked the hottest entertainment reporters in Hollywood about their work, their lives, and their dreams. PC: How did you start your site? DM: The site literally started as a joke. Ani Esmailian was in her senior year at Cal State Los Angeles trying to get a job at US Weekly, while Nora Gasparian got a monotonous job straight out of college working for GE, and I was working at Paramount Studios for Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. I would always invite Nora and Ani to Hollywood parties, whe...

* Vahe Berberian's milagros come in words, images, and emotions by Paul Chaderjian Before we enter his second-floor studio, painter, performer, writer Vahe Berberian insists on serving oranges and mandarins from the trees that line the apartment building's driveway. Vahe has been nurturing these trees for more than a decade, and you can tell he's proud of them. He likes green things, he says. Three of the units in the white apartment building - a few miles north of the San Fernando Valley's arterial Ventura Boulevard, in the flats of the Valley - are where Vahe paints, lives, and stores his works of art. Six months out of the year, however, here's not here. The tall and thin 51-year-old, with salt-and-pepper braids, spends a lot of his time taking his performance art and his monologues to Armenian communities as far away as the homeland and Australia. On this Tuesday afternoon, Vahe is in the Southland and plucking oranges off his tree with a lo...

by Paul Chaderjian gor (noun) -- pronunciation: 'gOr, 'gor 1 : grammatically incorrect verb ending in Western Armenian. 2 : innovative musician, charismatic, acoustic Armenian folk star. His name is blunt. Gor. Say it. It's okay. Gor. Say it again. You can, you know. True. Many frustrated Armenian schoolmarms and parents have scolded students to stop tacking a gor at the end of verbs. It may be grammatically incorrect, but it's also the name of the hottest music act since [fill in the name of the last artist whose music you downloaded]. Gor. Say it. Shout his name from rooftops, at church halls, and kebob stands. Text message your friends. IM them with smiley faces. Post his songs on your grandkids' myspace page. Swap music files. Blackberry - or even blueberry or raspberry if you prefer - this breaking news story. Sync up your iPod, because now, “Gor” is a more than an error in Armenian usage. It's the future, the present, a new age an...

by Paul Chaderjian     GLENDALE, Calif. – Like all filmmakers, Gor Kirakosian has to control the choreography inside each frame. At 30 frames per second, the discipline of controlling every detail captured with the lens of a high-definition camera sometimes spills out of the frame and into real life. At one of Glendale’s most popular Armenian hangouts, the all-American Conrad’s diner where we meet for our second interview, Kirakosian tells the aging Vietnamese waitress that he wants a green salad, finely chopped and evenly tossed with ranch dressing. “You really know what you want,” she says, and she’s right; Kirakosian wants to make people laugh. How a salad is tossed to please the palate of a comedy filmmaker may seem like a trivial detail to ponder, but making his first feature, Big Story in a Small City, Kirakosian has had to think about the most hard-to-please audiences by being precise about everything, including directing the waitress during an interview to p...