Aznavour Museum to host great singer to tell about his life – foundation director

The ‘Charles Aznavour Museum’ will be the first museum in the world to host the great musician and invite him to share his life story with visitors from all over the world, said the founder of the Aznavour Foundation, Kristina Sarkisyan, in Yerevan today.

“Walking through the museum, you will experience Aznavour telling his own life story through words, videos and projections of his major concerts in 3D,” Sarkisyan told reporters.

The singer, who is currently in Yerevan, announced earlier this year that he planned to launch a joint foundation with his son Nicolas Aznavour to preserve knowledge about French and European Chanson era, and raise awareness of his heritage and to implement cultural, educational and social projects.

The keys to the house-come-museum were handed over to the Foundation in an official ceremony on Thursday.

The initiative represents one a key effort to share Aznavour’s success story with the wider public, Sarkisyan said.

“It will show museum visitors exactly how Aznavour, who grew up in a family of five living in a 20 square meter home, attained his enormous success. We hope that sharing his journey will help people dream and pursue great goals. Aznavour’s life is unique, with the improbability of his success being a kind of fairy tale; his own dreams became a reality through painstaking work. Even today, Charles Aznavour continues to work as hard as ever,” she added.

When asked why they chose Yerevan as the site of the museum, Sarkisyan highlighted the singer’s dedication to his motherland and the great projects he initiated to offer aid to Armenia in the wake of the 1988 earthquake. Sarkisyan revealed that the museum will consist of several rooms, each dedicated to seminal stages in Aznavour’s life and career.

Key episodes in the singer’s life will be communicated through interactive displays and installations, Sarkisyan added.

“The first room will be an animation with sand. Sand is symbolic and will represent the Aznavour family, which fled Constantinople like so many other Armenian families; it also represents the many Armenians who died in the deserts of Deir-er-Zor during the Genocide,” she revealed.

“Innovation and interaction are essential to the experience of the museum. We want to make the experience of Aznavour’s life as immersive and accessible as possible, so that everyone – no matter whether they are Armenian, French or from anywhere else in the world – can benefit from it,” said the project manager for the museum Martin Muradyan.

Sarkisyan said that the launch is scheduled for 2018 but did not mention specific time-frames.