Brand Summer Music Series

Raffi Joe Wartanian & the Sér Ensemble

Join us for a live performance by Raffi Joe Wartanian & the Sér Ensemble on Aug. 7, 7:00 PM. The Summer Music Series features eclectic live music outside on the lawn behind Brand Library & Art Center.

Enjoy a live performance by Raffi Joe Wartanian & the Sér Ensemble on Friday, August 7 starting at 7:00 PM. Join us for eclectic live music outside on the lawn behind Brand Library & Art Center. Visitors are welcome to bring a chair or blanket and picnic on the grassy hillsides in Brand Park. Seats are not provided. Performances run 60 - 90 minutes without intermission. Performances may be experienced by children and families.

Raffi Joe Wartanian & the Sér Ensemble unite oud, violin, guitar, bass, and percussion as a vehicle for original composition, intercultural conversation, and expressive transcendence. Helmed by composer, writer, and educator Raffi Joe Wartanian, the group explores soundscapes where Armenian musical inheritance meets contemporary global sound.

At its core is the oud—the ancient, fretless ancestor of the guitar—reimagined here as a living, compositional tool. Drawing from Armenian folk, modal jazz, flamenco, rebetiko, and poetry, the ensemble’s music flows through geographic and stylistic borders while reveling in the uprooted groundedness of the diasporic experience. “Sér,” meaning love in Armenian and to be in Spanish, reflects a guiding ethos: compositions as a container of both presence and relation, as in an unfolding practice of community, contemplation, and mutual care.

The Brand Summer Music Series began in 2014 and is supported by the Glendale Arts & Culture Commission, through funding from the Urban Art Program, with support from Glendale Library, Arts & Culture, Glendale Community Services & Parks, and the Brand Associates.

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For additional information about this event, please contact Brand Library & Art Center at (818) 548-2051 or send an email at Info@BrandLibrary.org. Visit BrandLibrary.org/Summer-Music-Series to learn more about the Brand Summer Music Series.

Free, limited parking is available in Brand Park. An accessible entrance and accessible parking for cars with a disabled parking placard or license plate is located on the East side of Brand Library.

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