paul chaderjian

Nune Yesayan’s music featured on “The Shield”   by Paul Chaderjian May 19, 2007 On Tuesday, May 22, an estimated audience of at least three million Americans and an unknown number of viewers worldwide will hear Sayat Nova’s “Patkert Tamamov Kashats” on the FX channel’s hit police drama series “The Shield” starring Michael Chiklis. Bringing Sayat Nova alive for 21st-century audiences is Armenia’s modern-day minstrel, Nune Yesayan.   “This is the second time ‘The Shield’ uses Nune’s music,” says executive producer of Prime Entertainment Garbis Titizian. “‘Tamam Ashkhar,’ also from Sayat Nova, was used on June 8, 2004. That was episode 314 on season three, and this week’s show is number 517 in season six.”   The music-placement agency pitching Nune’s music to Hollywood is called NOMA Music. NOMA executive and former recording-industry insider Michael Wyner says Nune was referred to him when producers of “The Shield” were looking for Armenian music three years ago. When the p...

* A profile of the reporter, wordsmith and historian By Paul Chaderjian History, great characters, human drama are all elements that flow out of the pen of Mark Arax, who has been telling some of the most interesting and untold stories while working as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times for more than two decades. Mark Arax, considered one of the top journalists at the Times, is also a literary figure in his own right - a modern-day scribe, who was born into the most sensational Armenian stories of the 20th century. He could not help but investigate the story of his family, his people, his native California and turn them into literature, through a unique voice, a narrative voice that is Saroyanesque in spirit, Steinbeckian in scope and as epic as any modern scribe can be. After working in the LA Times offices in Southern California as a reporter from 1984-1990, what made Mark an overnight literary celebrity in his hometown of Fresno was a book he wrote about the murder of h...

- 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...