You can't really put a label on what Tigran Hamasyan does. You can try, of course. You could certainly say of the 27-year-old pianist and keyboardist that his music draws vividly on the Armenian folk tradition – he was born in Armenia. And you might point out that two tracks on Mockroot, his fifth album and debut for Nonesuch (the natural home for generically unclassifiable high-end musicians), ‘Kars 1’ and ‘Kars 2’, grow out of trad Armenian tunes. But then you could point to the confident use of electronica or say that, when they get their engine properly revved up as on ‘Double-Faced’, his trio comes on like a cross between early 1970s Herbie Hancock (a fan), E.S.T. and Radiohead. There's a strong element of rock opera about proceedings throughout: ‘The Roads That Bring Me Closer To You’ has a keening pomp-prog element. It's hugely ambitious in scope – bombastically so in places, even – and ultimately hard to resist. Tigran is an original and should be cherished as such.

Jazzwise spoke to Tigran Hamasyan about the album. So what's the idea behind the title Mockroot?

The idea is nature is mocking human actions and what humans are capable of doing. In the end, nature always teaches us a lesson. So on the album cover there's a tree growing out of a big lake. To me songs like ‘The Grid’ and ‘Out of the Grid’ represent what's going on in the world now – all the complicated technology that we're always praising and trying to get more of. So part of the album is about humans and technology.

Your music bears a strong influence from Armenian folk music.

Armenian folk music is something that's just in me and natural. It's part of my musical vocabulary. It's always sort of with me, even if I don't want it to be. Non-Armenian people look at it as something that's exotic but to me it's natural, I was born with it. It's an endless source of inspiration; you can always go deeper.

There are obvious rock and jazz influences too.

My father introduced me to Black Sabbath, Queen and other artists. Rock was an influence that was with me from childhood and it came out later. On the other side, my uncle was a jazz fan and he made me listen to a bunch of jazz funk like Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters as well as Miles Davis and Chick Corea. So I grew up listening to both kinds of music at the same time. At first I was more inclined towards rock but the reason I went over to jazz was because I loved improvising. That was always with me. I always wanted to do something surprising, even if it was to a rock tune.

Do you mind being labelled as jazz or whatever?

I don't get frustrated anymore. I used to be like ‘It's not really jazz and it's not really rock’. Now I don't pay any attention, it's just music. But it's definitely not fair to call it rock music and it's not fair to call it jazz. Those words are so broad: jazz can be anything to me. I have different terms [for my music]. But all of them were too long and they sounded really corny. At one time I was calling it ‘experimental jazz punk’ or ‘Armenian punk’ but it doesn't sound good. Also I don't like the word ‘experimental’ anymore.

What sort of audiences come to hear you live?

It's different everywhere we go. At all of the shows we get from kids to grandmas and grandpas. In places like New York, Paris and London, the audience is younger. But we never know. Yesterday we played in a small town in France and a lot of young people came. There's also the Armenian diaspora that comes to hear me play, like in Los Angeles or New York or Paris.