Mary Kouyoumdjian's "Paper Pianos" Gets World Premiere Recording

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Alarm Will Sound gave the world premiere of Paper Pianos at EMPAC in Troy, New York on February 25, 2023.

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Paper Pianos, the Pulitzer Prize finalist work co-created by GRAMMY-nominated Armenian-American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and South African-American director and writer Nigel Maister, will receive its world premiere recording, arriving digitally via Cantaloupe Music on Friday, August 7, 2026. Paper Pianos' third movement, All Good Things, is now available as a single.

Performed by the GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble Alarm Will Sound, the music-theatre and sonic-documentary work explores the journeys and obstacles refugees confront as they uproot lives and livelihoods, families and friendships, in search of safer harbors.

The work examines dislocation, longing, and optimism, both from the perspective of refugees themselves and from those who provide services to them. Artist proceeds from the album will be donated to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides support to refugees.

Paper Pianos draws on interviews conducted by Maister and Kouyoumdjian with refugees and refugee resettlement workers. It is anchored in four distinct voices of refugees and resettlement workers who have immigrated to New York: Afghan pianist Milad Yousufi and refugee resettlement workers Getachew "Gee-Gee" Bashir (Ethiopia), Hani Ali (Somalia), and Akil Aljaysh (Iraq), themselves refugees.

"What piqued my interest when we began this project, were the stories of those we seldom, if ever, hear from or about: the people who aid, resettle, comfort, greet on arrival, and provide orientation and guidance for newly arriving refugees, many who arrive on these shores with little more than their memories of home and the clothes on their backs," Maister states.

"Interviewing the four extraordinarily generous individuals whose stories make up Paper Pianos gave us insight into all these journeys. Though each story is unique, all share one element: that the gratitude they have for being given a second chance in this country is tempered by real and painful sacrifice: of family, friends, comfort, the familiar, dreams, aspirations, and more."

Alarm Will Sound gave the world premiere of Paper Pianos at EMPAC in Troy, New York on February 25, 2023, followed by a performance at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on May 10, 2025. Featuring projections by Kevork Mourad, the work brings together music, recorded testimony, animation, and documentary storytelling in a multimedia performance event conceived by Mary Kouyoumdjian, Nigel Maister, and Mourad, with scenic design by Afsoon Pajoufar and lighting design by Seth Reiser .

The tracklist can be found below. This work includes pre-recorded sounds and interviews on topics of conflict and violence that some listeners may find disturbing and may not be suitable for children.

I. Overture: This is Not a Choice (Gee-Gee's Primer) [10:58]

II. Child of War [17:50]

III. All Good Things [18:16]

IV. Bad to Worse [24:23]

V. Flight [05:47]

VI. An Open Fist [09:59]

Mary Kouyoumdjian is a GRAMMY-nominated composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first-generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.

A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her music-documentary Paper Pianos, Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall , Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Roomful of Teeth, among others.

Her work has been featured internationally at Carnegie Hall , Lincoln Center, LA Opera, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, the Barbican Centre , Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Millennium Park, Benaroya Hall, Prototype Festival, Cabrillo Festival, Big Ears Festival, Cal Performances, Tribeca Film Festival, and PBS.

Her debut portrait album, WITNESS with the Kronos Quartet, was released in 2025, and the world premiere recording of her opera, Adoration, was nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording. Kouyoumdjian is on faculty at The New School and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Nigel Maister is a director, writer, designer, visual artist, and performer, and a founding member of Alarm Will Sound. Nigel has staged, developed, and/or designed concerts at venues throughout the country and internationally, including Columbia's Miller Theatre, The Kitchen, Zankel Hall, Cal Performances, the Holland and River to River festivals, and in Korea.

He wrote the libretto for and directed I Was Here I Was I, a site-specific music-theatre work created for the Temple of Dendur (music by Kate Soper ) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, co-developed/directed AWS's acclaimed 1969, Conceived, designed, and directed John Cage 's Song Books for the Holland Festival, and performed his own text, Paper Trails (music by Stefan Freund), at the John Adams -curated In Your Ear Festival at Zankel Hall.

Maister wrote and is developing A Young Person's Guide to New Music and its accompanying piece, Anindi, Wilson, and the Super Super for Alarm Will Sound. He is a MacDowell fellow and currently serves as the Artistic Director of the International Theatre Program at the University of Rochester.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Mary-Kouyoumdjians-PAPER-PIANOS-Sets-World-Premiere-Recording-20260605)._