NEW YORK, NY—The 2008 Musical Armenia Concert, the twenty-fifth of the highly-successful series sponsored by the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, will take place on Sunday, March 2, 2008, at 2:00 pm at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

This year’s feature artists are the violist Aleksandr Nazaryan and the pianist Karen Tchougourian. The 2008 concert also celebrates the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Church in America and the 50th anniversary of the Prelacy under the Cilician See.

Established by Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian, of blessed memory, and the Prelacy Ladies Guild in 1982, Musical Armenia is dedicated to promoting young Armenian artists and to live performance of music by Armenian composers. Many of the series' past performers have established solid professional careers.

Aleksandr Nazaryan
Aleksandr Nazaryan will be accompanied by the pianist Bo-Kyung Park for part of his program. He will also perform as part of a string quartet that includes Srbouhi Pantikian, violin; Alexander Dzyubinsky, violin; and Lilit Kurdiyan, cello.

Mr. Nazaryan is an active soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral performer. He has been principal violist with the Las Vegas Music Festival and the Chautauqua Institution Music Festival Orchestras, and has appeared with The Juilliard School Orchestra at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Julius Rudel, Dennis Russell Davies, and James DePreist. Mr. Nazaryan has performed in Avery Fisher Hall under Stefan Sanderling and under James Conlon at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. In 2007, he was guest violist with the Chihuahua Symphony Orchestra in Mexico.

Mr. Nazaryan’s chamber-music engagements include appearances at The Juilliard School, the 2005 Las Vegas Music Festival, Steinway Hall in 2005, the United Nations in 2004 and the Chautauqua Institution Music Festival from 1999 to 2003. He has appeared as a soloist at The Juilliard School and at the Chautauqua Institution Music Festival. In solo appearances with the Chihuahua Symphony Orchestra in 1999, 2000, and 2002, Mr. Nazaryan performed Stamitz’s Viola Concerto, Hoffmeister’s Viola Concerto, and Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante.

Mr. Nazaryan received a bachelor of music degree from The Juilliard School in 2006 and is currently a master’s degree student at Juilliard under the direction of Prof. Samuel Rhodes.

Karen Tchougourian
Pianist Karen Tchougourian’s Carnegie Hall debut took place in 1999, when he appeared at Weill Recital Hall as a winner of the Artists International Competition, held in New York City. Mr. Tchougourian’s awards include top prizes at the Mozart International Competition (Belgium, 1991), the Gershwin Piano Competition and the Schumann Piano Competition (both in Armenia, 1993), the Beethoven Club Young Artists Competition (U.S., 1994), and the Arkansas State University Piano Competition (1994).

Mr. Tchougourian has concertized in the United States, Western Europe, and Russia, and has appeared in all of the major concert halls in Armenia. He has performed as a soloist with the Armenian State Symphony and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, and has been featured on national television and radio in Armenia. Other solo appearances include concerts with the Orchestre classique de la Communaute francaise de Jette, the Opera in the Ozarks Chamber Orchestra, and the North East Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

A native of Yerevan, Mr. Tchougourian has been living in the United States since 1993. He holds a doctor of musical arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music, a master of music degree from the University of Central Arkansas, and a bachelor of music degree, with honors, from the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory. He graduated from the Tchaikovsky Specialized Music School in Armenia and from the Courses of High Pianism in Russia. His sponsors include his mother Inessa Tchougourian, Lilit Grigorian, Victor Merzhanov, Neil Rutman, Aiko Onishi, and Constance Keene.

At the age of twenty, Mr. Tchougourian was invited to join the judges’ panel for the Komitas Conservatory’s entrance auditions. In 1996 in Arkansas, he was the assistant music director, vocal coach, and accompanist at the Opera of the Ozarks festival in Eureka Springs.

An exciting improviser in a variety of styles, Mr. Tchougourian has composed arrangements of many non-classical western and eastern standards. In 2005 in Yerevan, he debuted his piano-solo version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. His future plans include the performance of original jazz compositions and a dual-piano recital with his sister Anna Tchougourian.

Tickets for the concert are 30 dollars. For further information, please contact the Prelacy at 212-689-7810 or via e-mail at sophie@armenianprelacy.org.