Armenian News... A Topalian...Last of Manouchian Group dies 101

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Aug 5 2018

French Resistance Fighter Tchakarian Dies At Age 101, Last Of Famed Manouchian Group 

Arsene Tchakarian, the last surviving member of a famed group of immigrant Resistance fighters in France during World War II, has died at age 101, his family said on August 5.

Tchakarian, who was born to Armenian parents in Turkey in 1916, died on August 4 at a hospital at his home in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine. 

Tchakarian arrived in France in 1930, when his father accepted a coal-mining job. He was conscripted into the French Army in 1937, but was demobilized after France surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940.

He eventually became a member of a small group of foreign Resistance members led by Missak Manouchian, an Armenian poet and fellow communist. The fighters carried out attacks on German forces and conducted sabotage in Nazi-occupied France in 1943.

The group, which also included several Jewish members, was broken up in 1944 when 23 of its fighters were captured by German forces and sentenced to death by a military court. 

Tchakarian managed to avoid the roundup and escaped to Bordeaux, where he remained active in the Resistance until the end of the war.

The Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis, attempted to discredit the group after anger surfaced over the executions, denouncing the fighters as "the army of crime."

The government’s "Affiche Rouge" or "red poster" focused on the foreign and Jewish origins of the group as part of efforts to turn the populace against the Resistance.

A film, titled Army of Crime, was made about the group in 2009.

Tchakarian, who received multiple medals for his bravery after the war, was granted French citizenship in 1958.

He received the Legion of Honor, France's highest distinction, in 2012.

President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter that Tchakarian was "a hero of the resistance and an indefatigable witness whose voice sounded strongly right to the end."

Tchakarian campaigned after the war for recognition of the mass killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide.

The mass slaughter and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks is a highly sensitive issue in both Armenia and Turkey.

Turkey objects, saying that Armenians died in much smaller numbers and because of civil strife rather than a planned, systemic effort by the Ottoman government against the Christian minority.

At least 23 countries, including France and Germany, recognize the killings as genocide.

PanArmenian, Armenia

Aug 2 2018

Turkish citizen caught while attempting to cross border to Armenia 

Border guards of the Russian Federal Security Service in Armenia have detained a Turkishcitizen who was trying to illegally cross the border to Armenia, the press service of the Security Service said.

During the verification process, the violator turned out to have a mobile phone on which he had photos and video files of engineering structures and obstacles installed on the state border.

The trespasser was detained and transferred to law enforcement bodies of Armenia, in compliance with the country’s legislation.

A set of necessary measures is being carried out to clarify all the circumstances of the incident, the FSS message said.

Days earlier, the Russian border guards prevented the penetration of a criminal group of Afghan citizens into the country.

[but no link with Armenians who built the city!!]

Anadolu Agency (AA), Turkey

August 5, 2018 Sunday

Ancient city of Ani helps link Turkey, Georgia: Envoy

By Cuneyt Celik

KARS, Turkey

'I'm here to discover what we can do to introduce Ani to Georgia,' says Turkish Ambassador Fatma Ceren Yazgan

Eastern Turkey's ancient city of Ani is a link in healthy ties between Ankara and Tbilisi, said Turkey's ambassador to Georgia on Sunday.

"History is part of improving cultural relations between Turkey and Georgia. Ani is part of Turkish-Georgian relations, as well as regional relations," Fatma Ceren Yazgan told Anadolu Agency during her tour of the ruins of Ani in the eastern Kars province.

Also called the World City, the City of 1,001 Churches, the Cradle of Civilizations, and the City with 40 Doors, the ancient city was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2016.

"Ani has a well-known status in UNESCO. I'm here to discover what we can do to introduce Ani to Georgia," whose border is nearby, she said.

Interest in the site from both Turkish and foreign tourists grew when it joined UNECSO's World Heritage List, Yazgan added.

Located along Turkey's border with Armenia, the site, including Islamic architectural work from the 11th and 12th centuries, was the capital of Armenian emperors from 961 to 1045 A.D. at the time of the Pakradouni Dynasty.

The first settlement in Ani dates back to 3,000 B.C, and in its history was home to nearly two dozen civilizations.

Tourists show great interest in the Mosque of Abul Manuchihr, the first Turkish mosque, the Amenaprgic Church, and the Ani Cathedral.

Yaren Zeynep Saglam, a visitor, expressed her admiration for the archeological site.

"There are great works here, the architecture is perfect. I'm really impressed," she said.

RusData Dialine - Russian Press Digest

August 3, 2018 Friday

Moscow angered by Armenia's crackdown on CSTO chief

by  Alexandra Geogevitch

Kommersant

The new Armenian authorities' decision to prosecute former leaders has driven a wedge into Moscow's relations with Yerevan and may set the two countries at loggerheads even more. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's government has launched a criminal investigation against former senior officials as part of a case into dispersing opposition protesters in March 2008.

Pashinyan, who was sent behind the bars in 2010 for organizing the riots, now demands those who also had a role in the crackdown on the protesters be held accountable: ex-President Robert Kocharyan and Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Yuri Khatchaturov, who was the commander of the Yerevan garrison in 2008. They have been charged with usurping power.

The prosecution of the CSTO chief has sparked Moscow's outrage as this deals a blow to the image of the Russian-led military and political bloc, sources in Russia's state bodies said. One of the sources close to the CSTO did not rule out that "the attempt to slander Khatchaturov and the entire organization has been inspired by players outside the region."

The standoff between Moscow and Yerevan may affect Russian weapons supplies to Armenia agreed earlier, according to the paper. Top managers of two Russian defense enterprises said the implementation of the second package of contracts, under a $100 mln loan to Armenia, "now remains doubtful."

Alexander Iskandaryan, Director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute, has called not to link the current events in Armenia with the country's foreign policy priorities. "What is happening now in Armenia is within the logic of the Armenian domestic political process. It should be viewed in the context of relations between the new and old elites."

Resource World Magazine

Aug 3 2018

Lydian terminates 30% of workforce amid mine blockades

By Peter Kennedy

Lydian International Ltd. [LYD-TSX] shares continued their recent slide on Friday August 3 after the company released an update on a recently reported road blockade near its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project in Armenia.

In early trading Friday, the shares fell another 4.76% or $0.01 to 20 cents, continuing a fall that began in January, 2018 when the stock was trading at over 60 cents.

Lydian is a gold development company focused on construction at its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project, which is located in south-central Armenia. 

The aim is to build a large-scale, low cost open pit, heap leaching operation with gold production targeted at an average of roughly 225,000 ounces annually over an initial 10-year mine life.

That is based on an estimated resources of 3.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and 1.3 million inferred gold ounces, as outlined in a 2017 technical report.

The company has said existing mineral resources beyond current reserves and open pit extensions provide opportunities to improve average annual production and extend the mine life.

Development of Amulsar will use conventional open pit mining methods, over a minimum of 12 years. Development is scheduled to occur in phases with selective mining of orebodies.

However, in its Friday update, the company said illegal blockades have prevented Lydian and its contractors from entering the Amulsar site since late June.

“Prime Minister Pashinyan’s appeal instructing the protestors to discontinue the road blockades has shown limited results,” the company said. “Lydian and other stakeholders continue to petition local and national government officials to enforce the law by removing the illegal blockades and allowing Lydian to resume construction activities,” it said.

“To date, the government has not acted on those requests.”

As a result, Lydian has issued termination notices to 100 employees, representing approximately 30% of the workforce. Staged employee reductions are expected to continue until a permanent resolution is achieved. In addition, all construction contractors have been idled, a move that impacts roughly 1,000 contractors, Lydian said.

Meanwhile, the company is working to renegotiate its credit terms. Based on the original production plans, initial debt repayments were set to commence on July 31, 2018. But the initial repayment has now been extended to August 15, 2018, indicating a more comprehensive debt restructuring and financing plan may be announced by that time.

Scotiabank said in a report it would like to see the government take a firm stance with respect to removing the illegal blockades. However, the government seems to be reluctant to take action ahead of snap Parliamentary elections that are planned, but not definitively scheduled for May, 2019, Scotiabank said in a note to investors.

“It is possible this fall that the successful conclusion of an agreed to government inspection program there would be the impetus to resolve the blockades, but this is not assured,” Scotiabank added.

A political outsider, Pashinyan was elected in May, 2018, following country-wide protests. Blockades quickly followed that centre on environmental issues that were long settled and covered by Lydian’s permits.

These protests primarily targeted the mining sector, including the Amulsar project Lydian has said.

“Lydian remains firmly committed to its principles of responsible mining and transparency,” said Lydian President and CEO Joao Carrelo. “It is unfortunate that the current unlawful situation is continuing unnecessarily and negatively impacting host communities and the livelihood of more than 1,300 employees and contractors,” he said.

Pre-operational costs at Amulsar have been estimated at $425 million. When Lydian announced its first quarter results in May, 2018, the company said it anticipated an additional funding requirement of $65 million.

It said the estimate was sensitive to several key risk factors, including potential further changes in the schedule to achieve production, and ramp up to the point of positive cash flow, additional pre-operational costs, and upcoming contractual commitments.

Without a return to work, the funding gap is expected to remain unaddressed.

ARKA, Armenia

Aug 3 2018

Home prices in Armenia expected to rise by 15% in 2019

If current trends in Armenia’s real estate market persist, home prices will see a 15% rise in 2019, the head of the Akcern real estate company Hakob Baghdasaryan said at a press conference on Friday.

According to Baghdasaryan, the possibility of purchasing housing in new buildings, when mortgage loan interest is paid at the expense of income tax is an important factor in the real estate market.

"Even if some families do not have housing problem, they have a motivation to use banking services to buy housing to avoid tax losses," he said. Baghdasaryan notes that the Armenian real estate market is gradually reorienting towards the primary housing market.

He noted that the confidence in primary housing market began to increase when the buildings began to be commissioned in a timely manner.

"Only the price factor may force the buyer to abandon the primary market in favor of the secondary market," Baghdasaryan said.

In the first half of 2018, the highest market price of one square meter of living space in multi-apartment buildings was in the capital's administrative district Kentron - 504,000 drams, and the lowest was in the  Nubarashen district- 156,900 drams. 

In the regions, the highest price per square meter of housing was in Tsakhkadzor (280,400 drams), and the lowest in Dastakert community in Syunik province - 22,200 drams. ($ 1 - 481.16 drams). 

JAM News

Aug 3 2018

Armenian apricot exports up 78 per cent this year

As always, most of the fruits are exported to Russia

Armenian apricot exports are up 78 per cent as of 1 August, Minister of Agriculture Artur Khachatryan has announced.

“Last year we exported 29 thousand tons of apricots. This year, we’ve already exported 50 thousand tons. The season has practically come to an end, Now, apricots that are being kept in refrigerators are being exported”.

He also announced other data pertaining to agricultural production. In particular, over the past seven months about 100 thousand tons of fruit and vegetables were exported, while 120 thousand tons were exported over the course of the entire year. 

“We have already filled last year’s figures by 70 per cent, and we still have the autumn fruit ahead of us. If we have no issues with water, the year will have been a successful one for agriculture.”

The main importer of Armenian fruits and vegetables is Russia.

Milton Keynes Citizen

Aug 2 2018

Milton Keynes woman's sponsorship of Armenian girl has transformed her family's life

A Milton Keynes woman who has sponsored a wheelchair-bound Armenian girl for the last eight years has written a blog about her experience, as the UK has held its first Global Disability Summit.

Suzanne Smith helped change the life of Nora, who lives in a mountainous region of Armenia, where UNICEF says more than half of all children with disabilities and their siblings live in poverty and face social exclusion.

Suzanne, who has also fundraised to help the 16-year-old and her family, sponsored her through World Vision. Here you can read Suzanne' blog.

Before travelling to Armenia last autumn, little did I know that a cow and a wheelchair could make a difference to an entire family. But then I met Nora, and my perception forever changed.

My first impressions on meeting Nora were that life had been neither fair nor kind. At the age of 16, she should have been a thriving girl eager to explore the world. Instead, that inquisitiveness typical of teenagers had been suppressed by the isolated life Nora led owing to physical disability. She was completely dependent on others and rarely left her house in the mountainous town of Alaverdi.

Living with disabilities can be challenging in Armenia, where many disabled children are hidden in their homes and face social exclusion. According to UNICEF, more than half of all children with disabilities and their siblings here, live in poverty.

In Nora's case, social exclusion, coupled with her family's poor financial circumstances, meant that as the eldest of four children she lacked adequate care and was not able to live a fulfilled life.

This is why children's charity World Vision ear-marked her for support under its "child sponsorship initiative." This sponsorship model is unique and revolutionary in the charity sector, as it couples children in need with donors abroad, allowing them to form relationships virtually; and meet when possible.

World Vision's "child sponsorship" model goes beyond supporting one child, as it also funds projects that provide children and their communities with life-saving food and medicines, as well as access to healthcare and education.

This is why eight years ago, I became Nora's sponsor.

How sponsorship can change lives

When I visited Nora, I could see her family struggled financially. Her mother, Naira, was struggling to find employment in the old mining town of Alaverdi. Instead, she was mooting an idea of investing in a dairy cow so that she could generate some income by selling milk and cheese.

If this could be described as a pipe dream, then think of the other big distraction that occupies every Armenian's mind: the simmering tensions between the country and its neighbour to the East, Azerbaijan.

A 30-year-old conflict over territories contested by both Armenia and Azerbaijan has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than one million people. Although a truce was signed in 1994, fighting has continued.

For Nora, these political tensions have already robbed her of her father - a soldier deployed near the border with Azerbaijan for most of the year.

Making a difference

Upon my return back to the UK, I resolved to do more to help Nora. With the support of friends and family I began to fundraise for a much-needed replacement wheelchair for her.

Poorly-maintained roads and lack of ramps in Alaverdi mean it's quite difficult for disabled people to move from rural areas to the nearest cities.

Together with the World Vision Alaverdi Programme Office, and the local authority, we secured Nora a new wheelchair.

Naturally, this has helped Nora travel more freely. She now attends school and various youth clubs in the area.

I am also told that she is steadfastly overcoming her fears and realising that she can make all her dreams come true. Having found renewed hope and strength, Nora is now working hard to become an IT programmer.

Receiving help from the local authority enabled me to use the funds I raised to buy a cow for Nora's family. Naira is now able to make cheese and butter, which the family eat and sell. The money that they earn from the sales has helped ease their burden.

Not alone

Sponsoring a child has been a blessing and a life-changing experience for me. It not only enabled me to make a difference to the family of a vulnerable girl in Armenia, but it also created a unique bond with an extraordinary child who is facing tremendous challenges.

Meeting Nora and seeing the reality of her life was very emotional, but also eye-opening - I cannot even begin to think how different her life would be, if she wasn't registered as a sponsored child.

After my experience, I can confidently say that sponsorship really works. Even if we think we cannot make a difference with just a few pounds per month, we help bring about true and long-lasting changes in many people's lives.

Sponsorship is a meaningful tool to help children overcome challenges and reach their full potential, and I wish more fortunate people would do more to help transform young people's lives.

If you want to know more about World Vision sponsorship, https://www.worldvision.org.uk/child-sponsorship/

Panorama, Armenia

Aug 4 2018

Armenian church marks the Commemoration Day of 200 Pontiffs participating in the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus

Armenian church marks on august 4 the commemoration Day of 200 Pontiffs participating in the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus was convened in 431 A. D., during the reign of the King Theodosius Small. 200 Pontiffs participated in the Council with the goal to criticize the false teaching of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. According to his teaching there were two independent - divine and human natures in Christ, contrasting each other. Nestorius preached that Christ was born as a simple man and only later Divinity was settled in His Person, and therefore, the Holy Virgin Mary was not Godmother, but the mother of a simple man.

The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus condemns the teaching of Nestorius and adopts the teaching of St. Cyril of Alexandria as an orthodox teaching, according to which the divine and human natures of Christ do not exist separately, but are united unmixedly, without confusion - one Lord, one Jesus, one face and one united divine and human nature. St. Mary is not the mother of a simple man, but she is Godmother as she gave birth to the Son of God. So, the formulation of St. Cyril of Alexandria: “One is the nature of the Incarnate Word of God” was adopted.

The Armenian Church has not participated in that Ecumenical Council but has adopted its resolutions and ecumenical authority together with the previous Ecumenical Councils.

New York Times

Aug 3 2018

A Family’s 400-Year-Old Musical Secret Still Rings True

By Lara Pellegrinelli

The surest route to a drummer’s heart? Cymbals.

“You can have all the swirling harmony in the world,” the drummer Brian Blade said, “but only the cymbals can put you over the top of that mountain you’re trying to climb. The tension is the beauty of it, like riding a wave until you need it to crest.”

Mr. Blade, who is best known for playing with the country music singer Emmylou Harris and the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter,  said he thinks of his cymbals as an extension of himself, though he also gives credit for his distinctive sound to the instruments he plays: Zildjians. He has endorsed the brand for 20 years, just one in a long, diverse roster of musicians to do so.

Zildjian was incorporated in the United States in 1929. But the company’s relationship with drummers, and drumming itself, dates back much further: 400 years to be precise, to 1618, when a secret casting process resulted in the creation of a new bronze alloy for the court of Sultan Osman II, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

“My father always said that the name is bigger than any one person in the family,” said Craigie Zildjian, the company’s chief executive officer (the first woman to have the job), a member of the family’s 14th generation of cymbal makers. “In other words, you have this little piece of 400 years. Don’t screw it up.”

For the 3,000 or so years before 1618, cymbals had evolved very little. The earliest evidence of them can be found on pottery fragments from Hittite Anatolia dating to the Bronze Age. Metallic percussion was long part of the military music for Turkic tribes including the Seljuks, who migrated to the Middle East in the 11th century. (Some “had horns, others pipes and timbrels, gongs, cymbals and other instruments, producing a horrible noise and clamor,” reads a description of battle during the Third Crusade.)

The sound quality of these boisterous instruments might have left something to be desired by the 17th century, an age of Ottoman musical refinement. It was then that Avedis I, a 22-year-old Armenian metal smith and aspiring alchemist, learned that mixing ample tin into copper would produce a rich, robust sound. But he faced a formidable problem. “It’s a very brittle alloy,” Paul Francis, Zildjian’s director of research and development, said. “It will shatter like a piece of glass.”

Then Avedis I made a music-altering discovery — still carefully guarded by the family — that involved forging a metal so flexible it could be repeatedly heated, rolled and hammered into the finest instruments. “He was looking for gold,” Mr. Francis said. “As far as I’m concerned, he found it.”

Osman II thought so: He granted the young artisan permission to make instruments for the court and gave him the Armenian surname Zildjian (meaning “son of cymbal maker”). The family set up shop in the seaside neighborhood of Samatya in Constantinople, where metal arrived on camel caravans and donkeys powered primitive machines.

Those working in Zildjian’s shop produced cymbals for the mehter — monumental ensembles with double reeds, horns, drums and other metallic percussion that belonged to the empire’s elite janissary military corps. The Zildjians likely also did business with Greek and Armenian churches, Sufi dervishes and the Sultan’s harem, where belly dancers wore finger cymbals.

“Military music was a branch of their classical music,” Walter Zev Feldman, the author of “Music of the Ottoman Court,” said. Although mehter ensembles were known in the West for playing in battle, they also performed courtly suites for its rulers, like those by Solakzade Mehmed (1592-1658), who wrote under the name Hemdemi.

Every morning before prayer, and every evening after prayer, ensembles gathered to play from castle towers, including one above the gardens of Topkapi Palace. Hand-held cymbals measuring a foot or so in diameter probably marked the rhythmic cycles, which Mr. Feldman said “are among the most complex in the world: cycles of 24, 28, 32 and even 48 beats.”

It’s no wonder that composers like Gluck and Mozart wanted to emulate a Turkish style with busy, glittering percussion. Precisely what Ottoman music they heard is an open question, though. A handful of European rulers adopted mehter ensembles or sent their kapellmeisters to Constantinople to learn the tradition, but the composers more likely were exposed, Mr. Feldman said, to “klezmorim, local Jewish musicians, in places like Prague and Berlin, who had learned the Ottoman repertoire.”

What came to be known simply as “Turkish cymbals” were assimilated by European orchestras and, in the first half of the 19th century, into new military and wind band styles that thoroughly integrated West and East. Meanwhile, the janissaries, having assassinated one too many sultans, were outlawed and executed in 1826 — as were their mehter musicians. The Zildjians lost a significant portion of their market.

Avedis II built a 25-foot schooner to transport the first cymbals physically bearing his family’s name to London for the Great Exhibition, the first world’s fair, in 1851. His brother Kerope assumed the company helm in 1865, establishing a line of instruments named K Zildjian in several sizes and thicknesses that are still prized by percussionists today.

Those old K’s — which possess the “sound of two gladiator swords meeting,” in the words of Armand Zildjian, Craigie’s father — can be heard in the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Metropolitan Opera orchestras, among others. Gregory Zuber, the Met’s principal percussionist, said, “It’s a tradition that’s been handed down from player to player” and that can be heard in the tremendous, exposed crashes that heighten the drama of the 19th-century operas.

In America other musical forms began to shape, and be shaped by, the cymbal’s evolution. Avedis III, a Boston candy maker who left Turkey before the Armenian genocide, was reluctant to take over the family business when it was thrust upon him by his uncle Aram in 1927. But he changed his mind after checking out the growing dance band scene: “I saw the possibility that even if there wasn’t a market we could create one,” he recalled in a 1975 interview with The Armenian Reporter.

According to Jon Cohan’s book “Zildjian: A History of the Legendary Cymbal Makers,” drum shops and catalogs in the 1920s were likely to carry only so-called Oriental cymbals, American ones made of brass and nickel silver, and the weighty K’s from Constantinople. Avedis III sought out swing drummers, like Gene Krupa, and learned that they preferred Turkish cymbals but wanted them to be thinner and more responsive — “paper thin,” as Krupa put it.

The new instruments Avedis III developed and trademarked under his name had the crispness to cut through the sound of a big band. And, paired in hi-hats, cymbals took over the time keeping responsibilities from the laboring bass drum, a technique pioneered by Jo Jones of the Count Basie Orchestra.

“It gave you that upbeat that puts the snap in a dancer’s foot: down, chit; down, chit,” said Mr. Blade, who uses 1940s-era Avedis Zildjians in his drum kit. By the mid-1930s, celebrities including Chick Webb, Buddy Rich and Lionel Hampton were coming to the Zildjian factory in Quincy, Mass., to pick out their cymbals, with help from Avedis’s fine ear.

His experimentation producing novel cymbal types — swish and sizzle, bounce and crash —  would inspire a new generation of musicians to utilize a broader sonic palette. The bebop drummer Kenny Clarke led the pack by keeping a flexible, furiously paced, highly individualistic beat, probably on 17-inch Zildjian bounce cymbal. That instrument, later named a ride,  became a cornerstone of modern drumming.

Touring the factory, which now sits in a leafy industrial park in Norwell, Mass., is the drummer’s equivalent of stumbling into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams,” Mr. Francis, the director of research and development, said, quoting the movie, as he led the way on a recent visit.

A line of Gen16 products attempts to create an electronic cymbal that looks and feels like a real cymbal instead of a drum pad. A low-volume practice cymbal that looks like mesh is selling well among drummers in Asia who live in apartments with thin walls.

The lobby has the feel of a show room, with kits on display that belonged to Travis Barker (Blink-182), Tré Cool (Green Day) and Ginger Baker (Cream), along with a replica of Ringo Starr’s. “We all know what happened in 1964,” Mr. Francis said, referring to the British Invasion. “We had 90,000 cymbals on back order.”

A lounge gives drummers a place to try out their instruments or simply hang out while waiting for an order. Some, like Joey Kramer of Aerosmith and the famed session musician Steve Gadd, prefer to watch from the factory floor.

Metal glows hot from the furnace, and rolling machines spit out silvery pancakes of zinc-oxide-coated bronze, collected with coal shovels. Armand Zildjian modernized the factory using robots to remove the most burdensome physical labor and offer greater precision in tasks like hammering. (His younger brother Bob broke from the company 1981 and founded his own cymbal manufacture, Sabian, in Canada.)

Today, each instrument still passes through the hands of dozens of highly skilled workers. “Paper thin” is not measured by tiny calipers, but by lathe operators shaving off golden ribbons and checking to make sure their work falls within a certain range on digital scales.

The head cymbal tester, Leon Chiappini, who has worked at the factory for 57 years, listens to each one multiple times with a standard in mind and pairs them. But like drummers, no two are exactly alike.