AFTERNOON NOTES • WALNUT CREEK
Tea Time with Cello:Aleksander Nazaryan at THD
Walnut Creek, California — Afternoon Tea with Live Music
A Wonderful Afternoon
There is something about afternoon tea that invites you to slow down. The cups are warm in your hands, the table is dressed with fresh flowers/dried vegetables, and for a little while, the clock seems to tick more gently.
Last Saturday at our THD Tea gathering in Walnut Creek, that gentle pace was lifted by something extraordinary - live cello. With the piano quietly waiting in the background and an autumn floral arrangement on the sideboard, Aleksander brought his instrument into our Fireside Lounge and filled the space with a sound that was both intimate and deeply moving. His rendition of Yesterday and Moon River touched me deeply and the music still lingers in my memory.
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It wasn’t a concert hall. It was better. It was friends gathered close, tea poured, and the rich, singing voice of the cello just a few feet away. You could hear every breath of the bow, every resonance of the wood. The joy in the room was palpable- the kind of quiet joy that comes when music is shared, not just performed. Some of us even started to sing along.
Who is Aleksander Nazaryan?
Aleksander, Aleks to friends is a cellist and violist whose life in music has taken him across continents, but whose roots remain deeply Armenian. In his own words, he is originally from Armenia, and that identity has shaped both his path and his sound.
He is a recipient of the prestigious AGBU Performing Arts Scholarship, an award that has supported generations of Armenian artists in the diaspora. That support helped lead to formative moments early in his career, including his 2008 debut concert at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, and a memorable appearance as part of an AGBU quartet in Damascus in 2010, performing for Armenian communities abroad.
Today, Aleks makes his home in the East Bay in the Fremont area where he works as a performing cellist and violist, a teacher, and a generous collaborator at community events just like ours. If you search for him online, you’ll find that many public databases conflate similar names. What we hold to is what he has shared himself: he is an Armenian musician, carrying that tradition forward here in California.
“I was thrilled to rehearse and play with all these other young performers; everyone was so kind and open... It was a rare occasion where I could really enjoy being Armenian and performing in a foreign land.
A Little Background: The Armenian Cello Tradition
To understand why Aleksander’s playing felt so familiar even the first time you hear it, it helps to know a little about Armenia’s musical lineage.
At the turn of the 20th century, Komitas Vardapet, priest, musicologist, and composer traveled village to village collecting more than 3,000 Armenian folk songs. He saved melodies that might otherwise have vanished, and in doing so gave Armenian classical music its foundation: lyrical, modal, often mournful and tender at once, always close to the human voice.
That singing quality carried forward into Armenia’s great Soviet-era renaissance. Aram Khachaturian wrote his powerful Concerto-Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra in 1963, a work that demands both fire and folk-like lament. Alexander Arutiunian contributed his intimate Impromptu for cello and piano, while Arno Babajanian and Avet Terterian expanded the language further always keeping that thread of Armenian song.
Listen for it: The duduk, Armenia’s ancient double-reed woodwind is often called the most human-sounding instrument. Its long, breathy, slightly aching tone is the aesthetic heart of Armenian music, and you hear its influence in how Armenian composers write for cello: long legato lines, ornamented sighs, and a vibrato that seems to speak.
A beautiful modern bridge is the album Gems from Armenia by sisters Ani and Marta Aznavoorian, cello and piano miniatures by Armenian composers, played with exactly that vocal, soulful approach. It’s the same lineage Aleksander carries with him.
Why His Music Felt So Special
What made this tea party performance unforgettable wasn’t volume or virtuosity for its own sake. It was tone as well as the music selection. Besides, Yesterday and Moon River, I requested Aleks to play Fly Me to the Moon. It was a beautiful rendition.
Aleksander plays with a singing tone, warm in the low register, luminous on top, and always shaped like a sentence. The cello, more than almost any other instrument, is close to the human voice, and in his hands that closeness becomes conversation. You don’t just hear notes; you hear intention, tenderness, remembrance.
In a small room, with tea steaming and friends leaning in, that kind of playing is perfect. It doesn’t need distance. It invites nearness. It reminded us that music, at its best, is hospitality, a way of welcoming people into feeling.
Thank you, Aleks, for sharing your gift with us. The tea has been drunk, the cups washed, but your music lingers- as the best afternoon music does.
With gratitude from all of us at THD. I hope to see you soon during our future Happy Hour Here at THD every Friday Afternoon. Thank You MetaAI for this beautiful format. Kudos to Alexis for inviting Aleks to our Tea Party.
