Visions of Nar - Awakening
Released 18 September 2026, via CD and digital
Jeremy Rose - saxophones
Zela Margossian - piano
Bobby Singh - Tabla
Hilary Geddes - trumpet
Experience an enchanting collaboration of Armenian folk, jazz, and contemporary sounds in Awakening - the luminous new album by Visions of Nar.
Recorded at the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s stunning Pier 2/3 Studios, Awakening weaves transcendent beauty, dynamic interplay, and hypnotic rhythm into a spellbinding musical journey.
Led by pianist Zela Margossian and saxophonist Jeremy Rose, with guests Hilary Geddes (guitar) and Bobby Singh (tabla), the album radiates warmth, renewal, and a sense of rebirth - a celebration of new beginnings.
Building on the success of their debut Daughter of the Seas (ABC Jazz), Awakening expands Visions of Nar’s sonic realm. Across ten pieces - from the ethereal title track Cri de Coeur, to the deeply emotive Sweet Sorrow and the fiery, rhythmically charged Eat Chaos - the ensemble draws on Armenian modes, jazz improvisation, and electronic textures. The music conjures both intimacy and vastness, inviting the listener into a world where improvisation and composition, tradition and innovation, coexist. “This project has always been about connection,” says Rose. “Between cultures, between genres, and between musicians. Awakening captures that spirit - it’s music that searches for light.”
“…demonstrates the illustrious capacity of jazz to provide the freedom necessary for musicians to express themselves in new ways.”
★★★★1/2 The Australian, Eric Myers
Recorded live in the Pier 2/3 studios, the sessions captured the ensemble’s organic chemistry in crystalline detail. The sound of the Steinway D - resonant, alive - became the album’s heartbeat. “Recording at the ACO studios felt transcendent,” recalls Margossian. “The space itself inspired our performances - every note seemed to shimmer in the air.” With Hilary Geddes’ ethereal guitar and Bobby Singh’s mesmerising tabla, Awakening moves fluidly between fiery energy and meditative calm. “We wanted to create something timeless,” adds Rose, “music that acknowledges our heritage but speaks in the language of now.”
At its core, Awakening continues the band’s mission to weave cultural narratives through music. Inspired by the Armenian goddess Nar - deity of water, sea and rain - the music channels cycles of renewal and transformation. It’s a kaleidoscopic work: deeply personal yet universal. Critics have praised the group as
“transcendent beauty, remarkable interplay, shimmering with crystalline prose and profound intimacy”
(★★★★½ Fine Music),
“beguiling beauty, spellbinding and hypnotic” (Rhythms Magazine).
“A space that sonically and stylistically lay entirely outside of idiom.”
Sydney Morning Herald, John Shand
Awakening builds on this legacy - an album that evokes both hope and reflection.
Visions of Nar brings together some of Australia’s most distinctive jazz voices. Zela Margossian, an Armenian-Lebanese pianist and composer, is celebrated for her emotive storytelling and virtuosic blend of Armenian folk and contemporary jazz, earning ARIA nominations and international acclaim. Jeremy Rose, an ARIA and APRA Award-winning saxophonist and composer, is one of Australia’s leading creative forces, known for projects including The Vampires, Earshift Orchestra, Vazesh and Jeremy Rose Quartet. Bobby Singh, among the world’s most distinguished tabla masters, brings rhythmic vitality honed under the tutelage of Aneesh Pradhan, while Hilary Geddes, known for her work with punk outfit The Buoys, adds grit and other worldly sounds through her nuanced guitar textures. Together, they form an ensemble where music transcends boundaries - a celebration of identity, collaboration and renewal.
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Recorded at ACO Studios, Pier 2-3, Sydney, 23-24 August 2025, by Bob Scott
Mixed and mastered by Bob Scott
Photo by Norayr Kasper
Artwork by Ara Gharakhanian
Photos by Ken Leanfore
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Cri de Coeur
This piece unfolds gradually, a reflection on the recent conflicts in the Middle East. A cry from the heart - beyond language, beyond logic. The guitar provides a bed track, the tabla a rhythmic the glue, the saxophone and piano share the melody and build collectively. This piece inhabits a space where feeling takes over: raw, and immediate.The Little Things
Most of life’s little things are the ones that are essential for our happiness and provide the nourishment that we need for the soul. In times of turmoil and hardship, it is the little things that make the difference which sometimes we take for granted. This piece reflects that sentiment and it hovers between lightness and the weight of interferences.Gorgeous Nothings
The title comes from The Gorgeous Nothings, a facsimile collection of Emily Dickinson’s late, fragmentary writings - poems scribbled on envelopes and scraps of paper. These are fleeting gestures: partial thoughts, quiet eruptions of feeling and moments. There is a sense of intimacy in their incompleteness, that meaning lives in a sense of awe of the everyday. This piece draws on that same philosophy - it leans into simplicity, repetition, and restraint. Small musical ideas are revisited and gently transformed, allowing the improvisation to unfold organically over time.Sweet Sorrow
This piece is about the lingering sorrow which becomes sweet with the passage of time. As the piece unfolds, you can hear the two blending together sonically and creating a whole which binds them together, sort of becoming as one.Let’s Play in the Fields Restless and searching, this piece moves through shifting perspectives and possibilities. It explores multiplicity - of identity, of direction - without settling, always in motion. Just like a child who explores nature in the field, this piece is full of life and the curiosity it requires to explore new things.
Eat Chaos
The title draws from Kae Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos - a reflection on the quiet turbulence of contemporary life. This piece inhabits that unsettled space, where tension simmers beneath the surface. The ensemble shifts roles: bass clarinet, processed with delay, becomes a shadowy, unstable foundation; guitar introduces subtle distortion and texture; and the piano melody floats above - distant, searching. The music unfolds through repetition and gradual mutation, allowing the chaos to take shape without resolving.Blessing
Blessings are everywhere, we just need to see them as some are in disguise. This beguiling piece is about the search for the positive although at times, the latter is veiled with ambiguity.Don’t Wait to Be Introduced
The title draws from Ornette Coleman - a call to claim space without permission. This piece embodies that spirit, driven by the extraordinary energy of tabla virtuoso Bobby Singh. The music unfolds in layers: piano and saxophone drift freely, out of time, while the tabla establishes a relentless, propulsive pulse. This tension between freedom and drive becomes the core of the piece, gradually intensifying as the ensemble locks into a shared momentum.Times Like These
This piece is directly related to the conflicts around the world specifically in the past few years. In times like these, we think about the fragility of life and how existence can be shattered with the force of bombs triggered by human greed. In times like these, we reflect, we assess and we try our best to make the world a better place through any means that is possible for us.Awakening (Rose)
A slow emergence into consciousness. Like dawn through fog, this piece unfolds gently - revealing new layers of perception. Fragile and searching, it invites questions rather than answers.