Album Notes

VOYAGE TO AMASIA is a feature-length documentary inspired by Eric Hachikian's piano trio of the same name. Amasia, Turkey is the town where Eric's grandmother, Helen Shushan, was born. In 1915, when she was 40 days old, the Ottoman government exiled Helen and her family and most of the other Armenians in Amasia and forced them to walk south towards the Syrian Desert. This was just one instance in a systematic Ottoman campaign to deport and execute Armenians. An estimated 1 -1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1923. It was the first genocide of the 20th century -- the Armenian Genocide.

Helen and her family miraculously survived and eventually reached the United States. When Eric was growing up, Helen told him the stories about Amasia that she had heard from her mother. She told him it was the most beautiful place in the world.

Helen always longed to return to Amasia. She never did, though, because Turkey denies the occurrence of the Genocide and she decided she could not go back to a place that doesn't acknowledge what happened to her and her family.

When Helen died in 2004, Eric wrote Voyage to Amasia as an imagined musical journey with his grandmother to a place they both only knew through stories and photographs. The piece premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2005, and when filmmaker Randy Bell heard it, he suggested that, using the music as an inspiration and guide, the two make a real voyage to Amasia.

The filmmakers spent nearly a month traveling through Turkey and Armenia, following Eric's family's exile march from Amasia to Malatya, and ultimately to Istanbul. The filmmakers also visited modern-day Armenia and explored Yerevan and a village in Armenia settled by exiles from Amasia after the Genocide.

The film traces a path through the past, telling Eric's family's story, the story of the current people of Turkey and Armenia, and how the Armenian Genocide affects Turkish, Armenian, and American politics today.

“Voyage to Amasia” performed by
Pauline Kim Harris, violin
Christine Kim, cello
Orlando Alonso, piano

The Voyage to Amasia Orchestra:

Eric V. Hachikian, conductor
Christine Kim, music contractor

violins
Pauline Kim Harris, concertmaster
Conrad Harris
Tom Chiu
David Marks
Conway Kuo
Emily Bruskin Yarbrough
Christina Courtin

violas
Daniel Panner
Max Mandel
Mark Holloway

cellos
Christine Kim
Greg Hesselink

bass
Peter Donovan

music engineer
Gary Chester

assistant music engineer
Mark Bengtson

recorded at
Downtown Music Studios
New York, NY