Borrowing its name from a poem by the great Maya Angelou, Gharibian’s fourth album ‘Phenomenal Women’ is set to release on January 24th on Rue Bleue Meredith Records. 

Captivated by a video of Angelou reciting her poem in London in 1987, Gharibian found herself urged to pay musical tribute to the poet, and to the strength of all women. “In all the battles we are fighting right now—against sexism, the violence women endure, and for equality—I want to tell them, “We are brilliant, we are the wealth, the intelligence, and the power, we are phenomenal.””

Influenced by the school of ‘natural vocalists’ in Nina Simone, Jeanne Lee and Joni Mitchell, Gharibian’s luminescent energy leads her listener through the record’s delicately varied tonal palette of celebration, prayer, joy, and melancholy across the album’s ten original compositions and three imaginative covers. 

Drawing from the music of her childhood—especially her father’s voice (Dan Gharibian, co-founder of the group Bratsch), which she heard singing in Armenian, Russian, Greek, and Romani—Gharibian blends her personal cultural heritage with contemporary styles, singing in five languages on Phenomenal Women, embracing the inflections of English, Armenian, French, Portuguese and Arabic with undeniable ease. 

Accompanied by her long-term collaborator Belgian drummer Dré Pallemaerts and bassist Kenny Ruby, Gharibian breaks away from the trio format she’s known for and shares her vocal duties for the first time with singers Lea Maria Fries, Linda Oláh and Isabel Sörling. Soaring gospel-tinged improvisations and three-part vocal harmony, ethereal synth timbres, propulsive piano-led grooves, and crystal clear modern production provide the musical backdrop for a body of work that offers hope and unity in a divided world.