Armen Grigoryan, one of Armenia’s contemporary masters of the duduk, has been kind enough to take one of my guitar compositions (recorded a decade ago on Lowden’s one-of-a-kind S25J nylon string jazz guitar) and record a duduk solo over the guitar.

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He has done this with a different ear for the music than most Western European players would use; the duduk does not follow the tune, but floats over the tune with a motif entirely of its own, like two songs being sung together, or a countermelody. The guitar never deviates from a conventional Dm-based theme with a brief excursion to the major (which Armen pushes into the background as it’s the least sympathetic passage to the soulful, plaintive sound of the duduk). The Armenian double-reed woodwind lives in a world of free pitch and expression, as flexible as the human voice or a violin.

– David