Guitarist, songwriter, and globe trotter, Khoren Mikaelian hails from Armenia’s Pink City, but his sound bursts in a wide palette. From the earthy, heavy metal-folk fusion Nairi to the electro-pop duo Eleven Green, Mikaelian (or “Miki” as his non-Armenian friends call him) has left no node untouched. Except one.
“It’s been my childhood dream to play electric guitar with an orchestra.” The top of his bucket list is the most ambitious: to become the first to tak on one of Armenia’s classical gems – Aram Khachaturian’s violin concerto in D minor – and adapt it for the electric guitar.
The catch, he explains, is to not play the electric guitar like an electric guitar – but to reach as close as possible to the range of a violin. “The notes are the frame,” he explains. But within it, there is freedom to manipulate the sound. I asked if I could hear a sneak peek. What he sent was something ethereal. The wailing of a guitar courting a violin. A boy-meets-girl story in strings.
“The guitar is a flexible, forgiving instrument – not like the violin,” he grins. As a child, he tried his hand at the instrument, but found it far too demanding and needy. “When you play violin, you can’t play anything else – not seriously.” So, his attention shifted. It didn’t take long to find his instrument.
Strings in the blood
Mikaelian was born into a home filled with music. His uncle was a rocker and would often ask him to join along on home jams. Yet, the thought of “becoming” a musician never crossed his mind. “To ‘choose’ music is like deciding to breathe now and not breathe later.”
When conscripted into the army, he was separated from his instrument. At night, Mikaelian would lie in bed, warming up his fingers – excited at the prospect of being reunited with his guitar. Fortunately, he was soon placed in the military’s music unit. That one week was the longest he’s ever been away from his guitar. It’s also when he came up with the idea for the Khachaturian concerto project, he says.
Yet, for all his ambition and affability, Mikaelian professes that, at heart, he is quite shy. “At parties, I’m the guy in the corner, observing.” But get a guitar under this arm, the confidence builds. “It’s quite literally your voice!” I say. “That’s exactly it,” he smiles. The instrument has taken him across the world – to countless festivals, concerts, and parties – but it all started in one open-air cafe in his hometown, Yerevan.
“I was 15, walking outside one evening, when I spotted a guitarist, getting ready to play.” He cannot remember who the man was or what he looked like, but he can still recall the moment the pick strummed the string. “That vibration was so loud, so powerful.” It was the moment when seeing, hearing, and feeling the guitar all came together as one. “I realized that I wanted to do that, too! To feel free.”
On his songwriting process: “I don’t believe in muses”
Music is freedom, and a means to find balance. Part of that process involves bouts of intense concentration. Mikaelian explains his one songwriting rule: “If the song doesn’t take shape, I will not get up. I need to sit in place until it comes together.” Coming back later would result in a completely different song. “And that initial inspiration disappears – like a ghost.” We didn’t discuss the ghost of Picasso, but I’ll bet that Mikaelian would jive with his approach, that “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
Unlike Picasso, however, Mikaelian doesn’t believe in muses. Songwriting is a skill, he maintains. And all skills need to be practiced. “There are a lot of songs in you. You must detox from the bad ones to get to the good ones.” But, he concedes, to actually write a bad song is very hard. “A bad song is simply something that elicits nothing in you. And that’s not only hard – it’s quite dangerous.”
COVID blues: Creativity “Against the Odds”
From here, our discussion shifted to COVID-19. The pandemic proved to be an artistically productive period for Mikaelian. With live gigs and touring out the window, he and his partner in music (and life), Nare Nikoyan, were forced to be creative behind closed doors. Every month, their band, Eleven Green, would release a new song on the 11th. And just last month, on the 11th of April, they released their first album, “Against the Odds,” featuring nine tunes, addressing themes of heartbreak, healing, and injustice. Mikaelian’s rough indie rock-electronic beats mesh well against Nikoyan’s clever word plays on tracks like Moneypullation and High (We Will Rise Again) – the latter, a play on “hye,” the Armenian word for “Armenian.” Laced with rage echoes in thumping beats, electric strums, and a woman’s wispy vocals. Perhaps commonplace throughout the world, but a rarity in Armenia, all of Eleven Green’s songs are original and in English. “There is a high demand for cover bands [in Armenia] – especially at weddings and fun events.” This might be because of how closed the nation is to international artists, he explains. “In Germany, for example, if people want to hear Coldplay or Ed Sheeran, they can just go to their concerts. But in Armenia, you don’t have that option. So, people are starved for good cover artists.”
Despite a dedicated local following, Eleven Green’s foreign fan base easily dwarfs those in their home country. They received offers to tour across Europe, just a year after forming in 2018. The forced lockdowns were tough on a band whose main audience sits outside their nation’s borders. And yet, Mikaelian never lost hope that things would turn around.
“Travel is an experience that you will never get from sitting on a couch in Armenia,” he explains. “You have to breathe the same air as the musicians you admire and want to collaborate with. You cannot get the feel of Venice Beach outside of Venice Beach. Or jazz like the jazz of New Orleans. Just like you cannot get the Armenian experience – that duduk essence – outside of Armenia.”
From ‘shock to rock’: charity, community, and contest through guitar
In December 1988, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through Armenia’s city of Spitak. Britain’s biggest rockers of the time (think Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, and Queen) came together for Rock Aid Armenia, which raised millions of dollars for relief efforts. In 2019, the initiative’s 30th anniversary was celebrated in Yerevan. Included in the program was a guitar competition, where the winner would receive a guitar by Black Sabbath frontman, Tony Iommi.
Mikaelian won that guitar, something he calls “an unforgettable moment.” It was a great addition to the Yamaha Revstar RSP20 electric guitar he won the year before, at the Yamaha E-Band Competition. But Mikaelian doesn’t just perform and participate in competitions – he also creates them. As the Vice President of InMotion Armenia, an NGO that provides developmental opportunities for youth through Erasmus+, Mikaelian banded together with a group of musicians to co-found Synergy Music Lab.
“In 2021, [we] organized “Synergy Guitar Contest” in Armenia to help young electric guitarists develop their skills. It was so inspiring that we decided to make it an annual event in different countries,” he explains. Brands such as Fender and D’Addario have lent their support to the nascent initiative.
When not performing or judging guitar competitions, Mikaelian can be found instructing his music students at Nexus Center for the Arts or sharing clips of his riffing on TikTok. This summer, you can catch him in Ireland, giving workshops on music. But his “happy place” is by the ocean, watching (and listening to) the waves. “It sounds romantic, but I’m not romantic,” he insists. Twenty years after hearing that pick strum a stranger’s guitar, Mikaelian still craves exploration. To discover new people, new places, and – perhaps most importantly – new sounds, lurking outside an unassuming cafe.
Words by Lilly Torosyan
