Yulia Ayrapetyan is a US-based pianist, producer and pedagogue, establishing herself as one of today’s exciting young artists after making her debut at the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in 2023. She has attracted international recognition for her exceptional artistry, displaying striking assurance, imagination, artistic approach, and remarkable consistency in the musical integrity and creative insight of her performances. She is also known for her natural musicality, tonal expressiveness, and as a benchmark interpreter of Komitas and Melikian, and has performed in the United States, Europe, Russia, Armenia and China.

Born in 1988 in Bryansk, Russia, Ayrapetyan studied in Moscow, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school. Her repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers. She has given the US, Chinese, Europe, Russian and Armenian premieres of forgotten Armenian piano music, which she rediscovered. It has since become her passion to perform this music on the world’s stages.

She actively supports and participates in recordings and concerts for her husband Mikael Ayrapetyan’s project, Secrets of Armenia.

Yulia Ayrapetyan has actively studied various musical and pedagogical systems, and in 2012 created and implemented her pedagogical methodology for children, based on accessibility, ease of perception and individual approach.

www.yuliaayrapetyan.com

Komitas was one of the first Armenian musicians to undergo classical Western musical training, in Berlin, in addition to music education in his own country. He was educated in a theological seminary in Vagharshapat, and ordained a priest in 1894. A gifted singer, he studied liturgical singing and early Armenian chant notation. He also developed a keen interest in folksong, and collected melodies which he would then harmonise for choral performance. He published both folksong collections and writings on Armenian church melodies, and his work laid the foundations for the development of a clearly defined national musical style. He moved to Constantinople in 1910, a city with a significant Armenian population, and continued to compose (predominantly vocal music), conduct and research.