"SO MUCH WEIRDNESS; SO LITTLE TIME" Personal blog for GRAMMY®-Award nominated composer and Buddha-Bar recording artist, Armen Chakmakian.
Welcome! You'll find posts here related to my music career and anything else happening in my life. I'd like to invite you to visit my website (links below) and check out my music and videos. Happy surfing!
On the flight back from Rio de Janeiro, my wife and I were bumped up to First Class. (Bummer! I hate when that happens.) I'm sitting in my seat reflecting over the last nine months touring and performing in Saltimbanco and all the things that were experienced with this production coming to an end.
The flight attendant comes by my seat and gives me a porable DVD player with 21 movies to choose from. I notice a movie called A Prarie Home Companion, a movie I know nothing about. But I do notice that it was directed by Robert Altman, and I'm a big fan of Robert Altman's!
I pop in the disc and hit the PLAY button, and am amazed that this is a story about what goes on backstage at a radio show that is coming to an end after a long and successful run.
Saltimbanco had its last performance on Dec 10th, 2006, and closed its doors after a 14-year run playing to almost 10 million people in 69 different countries. It was an amazing last show! All the acrobats and performers nailed their parts, the band was tight and rockin', and it couldn't have been a better show.
It was the longest period of time I had been away from home...at times exhausting, at times exhilerating, but never a boring moment.
Asleep at my makeup table between shows, Sat. Sept 16, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Being a part of this Cirque du Soleil production was not only extremely rewarding but also one of the highlights of my life.
One of the most difficult I've ever done was saying goodbye to the many friends I made in this show -- performers, musicians, administrators and crew... a few are moving on to other shows; some taking time off, some going back to their homes in Russia, China, Ukraine, America, Canada, etc.
Thank you Saltimbanco for the ride of my life. You are all the most talented, creative, fun, amazing and whacky group of people I have ever worked with!
I was able to get a copy of the head shots that appear in the Saltimbanco program. Here are two head shots that were taken of me at Cirque du Soleil headquarters back in April 2006.
Meet Xi Shun. He's the tallest living man in the world, just short of 7' 9" tall, but actually seems taller when you're standing in front of him. Xi Shun is from Mongolia and was doing a promotion for the Guiness Book of World Records in Brazil. My wife and I just happened to be at Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain) here in Rio de Janeiro while they were promoting the book.
He was so happy to meet everyone...had big smile on his faceon his face the entire time, shaking hands...chatting. It was very cool meeting him. (Click pics to enlarge)
Susan and Xi Shun
Xi Shun towering over us
View from Pao de Acucar mountain in Rio de Janeiro
Looking down on Rio de Janeiro from Pão de Açúcar
Looking across to Corcodova mountain from Pão de Açúcar
I was a bit melancholy leaving Sao Paulo, especially after making so many friends, experiencing the amazing local music scene there, and visiting so many cool places. But change is good and I'm excited to be moving to Rio de Janeiro. We played to sold out crowds for every show during out three months in Sao Paulo, and Saltimbanco has sold out in Rio as of April 2006!
It was a pretty comfortable eight hours bus ride and the landscape outside was picturesque.
(click on photos to enlarge)
We arrived at a lovely hotel in the evening and were greeted by live samba, caipirinhas and lot of smiles! And that's just while we were checking in to the hotel!
It felt so good to breathe in the healing ocean air. I woke up the next day to my wife climbing into the bed to show me pictures she had just taken of our view while I was asleep. It's beautiful...a bit strange in a way but gorgeous because I have the ocean to my right, and the biggest favela in Brazil to the left.
This is a good start to the last leg of this Cirque du Soleil tour!
Many of us on Saltimbanco left Sao Paulo for Rio de Janeiro on Monday morning. The Cirque du Soleil big top is going up this week! But before leaving Sao Paulo, I was on a quest for some quality percussion instruments, particularly a berimbau and pandeiro along with some other 'toys'. My friend Bruno hooked me up and took me to a percussion shop called Batucadas 1000. (click photos to enlarge)
Then off I went to play two shows. Afterwards, a bunch of us were invited to a tavern called Ó do Borogodó in the Pinheiros neighborhood to listen to our friend Andre Hosoi play mandolin in a choro ensemble. This is the music that gave birth to the samba.
It's a bit of a grind doing 10 three-hour Cirque du Soleil shows per week. So the night we play our last show of the week we really love to let loose and blow off some steam. So on a Sunday at 1:30 a.m., the Saltimbanco band was more than happy to give back to our fellow Saltimbancs and provide the music for the rockin' party we held at the Bleecker Street bar in the Pinheiros borough of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
We played some U2, Green Day, Brian Setzer, Commodores, Jimi Hendrix, CCR, Jet, and the list goes on!
(click on thumbnails to enlarge)
1. Me, Marc Soheir in the back* 2. Serge Maheux* 3. Marc Soheir* 4. Benoit Martin* 5. Paul Hanson** 6. Martin, Sitting in on lead vocals** 7. The Band* 8. The crowd rockin' away!** 9. Crowd shot 2* 10. Vasya "gettin' down"** 11. Taisiya and Bubu**
I've had an interesting life so far. At age 11 I found out that the Turkish word chakmak translates to Flintstone in English. Lucky me! I've played in many bands, one of them was nominated for a Grammy (Shadowfax), and another that appeared on the Tonight Show fronted by Oscar De La Hoya, the boxer (yeah, he had a band for two weeks). I've played in biker bars and watched a biker bust through the doors on his Harley and start doing "donuts" on the dance floor! I've seen screaming matches between psychotic people in the music business over nothing important, my ex-girlfriend became a nun, experienced the death of a band mate, married a woman I met online who has a brother named Armen Chakmakjian, auctioned my soul on eBay to raise money to finish an CD, found out after golfing left-handed for 19 years that I play better right-handed, and today...today I received a phone call out of the blue from Ralph Rieckermann, the bassist for the Scorpions. He asked me to record some lounge-style piano music as a "favor" to one of HIS friends for a hundred bucks. Scorpions? Lounge? Favor? WTF? It was then that I realized THIS is a good day to start a blog.
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