Komitas Choir at HART's Christmas Carol Concert
2016-12-10
On December 7, at St Cuthbert’s Church in London, the annual Christmas Carol Concert was organised by Baroness Caroline Cox in support of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART). The concert featured the Armenian Komitas Choir, the Ugandan Acholi London Choir and the Chinese opera singer Cheng Wang.
The members of the Komitas choir were wearing forget-me-not badges in memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide in 1915. The choir conductor Sipan Olah in his welcoming speech referred to the bitter pages of the Armenian history. He also mentioned that the concert day, December 7 was another sorrowful date for the Armenian people, as the devastating earthquake in 1988 struck Armenia killing thousands of people.
At the concert, the Komitas Choir, conducted by Sipan Hakobyan and accompanied by pianist Ella Babayan, performed "Today is Christmas" by Komitas, Welsh lullaby "Empire of the Sun", "Free Armenia" by Stepan Lusikyan and Armenian national songs by Stepan Shakaryan.
Baroness Caroline Cox welcomed the participants of the concert and praised their goodwill at the concert. In particular, she referred to the obvious professional growth of the Komitas Choir and congratulated the chairman of the choir, Honorary Secretary of the TTL Vartan Ouzounian, and the artistic director and conductor Sipan Olah as well as the members of the choir. She highly appreciated the important cultural activities of the choir both within the Armenian community and in the British society.
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