Some 30,000 feet above the clouds, passengers on a Moscow to Yerevan flight were treated to an unexpected and rare in-flight performance as the Sretensky Monastery Choir rose from their seats and gathered in the aisle to sing Mikael Tariverdiev’s “Song of the Distant Homeland” and Makar Yekmalyan’s Armenian classic “Ov Hayots Ashkharh,” while travelers reached for their phones to capture the unforgettable scene as the harmonies filled the cabin.
One passenger described the moment as “a divine voice in the sky,” during the November 26 Aeroflot flight, delivered by the renowned Moscow-based ensemble.
The choir was traveling to Armenia to take part in “Attraction,” a large international documentary project. The film explores shared cultural and spiritual values such as language, traditional family life, faith, and historical memory, and follows the choir as they highlight Russia’s cultural ties with Armenia, Serbia, and other countries. In the first episode, the artists are joined by Russian-Armenian actor Dmitry Kharatyan, People’s Artist of Russia, who travels with them to his ancestral home in the city of Meghri.
Makar Yekmalyan, the composer of “Ov Hayots Ashkharh,” was an Armenian composer born on February 2, 1856, in Vagharshapat. He studied at the Etchmiadzin seminary before continuing his musical education in St. Petersburg under the guidance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Yekmalyan later taught music in Tbilisi, where he lived until his death in 1905. His most significant work was the Patarag, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Divine Liturgy, completed in 1892 in several arrangements and first published in Leipzig in 1896.
