Ashot Ariyan

Ashot Ariyan (born in 1973) is a Canadian-Armenian pianist and composer. A native of Armenia, he moved to Moscow to continue his education in composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, where he graduated with distinction in 2001. A year later, after gaining a master’s degree, he became a Teaching Assistant of Prof. Karen Khachaturian at the Moscow Conservatory and taught as a lecturer in Composition and Music Theory.

In 2007, he moved to Canada to complete his doctoral thesis at the University of Montreal, receiving his doctorate in 2013. The goal of his doctoral program was to revive the neglected genre of opera-ballet by writing his own work in that medium, entitled “Bilgamesh” (or “Gilgamesh”), in which the archaic Mesopotamian languages Sumerian and Akkadian are used exclusively.

Ashot Ariyan has taught Composition and Music Theory at several music institutions including the Central Music School of Moscow Conservatory, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the University of Montreal, and McMaster University.

In 1999, to wide acclaim, Ashot Ariyan performed his own “Concerto-Brevis” for piano and orchestra in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, accompanied by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2009 his symphonic fresco “Sounds of Stonehenge” was performed in Montreal by the UdeM Symphony Orchestra. Later, in January 2011, the same work was performed in Armenia by the National Philharmonic Orchestra and in Moscow by the Moscow State Orchestra. His work, Plan te X (Un train pour l’enfer II) for seven instruments, was performed in Montreal with great success by the Arkea ensemble in November 2013. Many of his chamber works were first performed at the Moscow Autumn International Music Festival. One of his latest works is a Cycle of 12 Fugues and Postludes for piano, commissioned by the Region of Waterloo Art Fund. In 2016 his music accompanied a presentation of the ballet “Two Suns,” directed by Rudolf Kharatian and dedicated to the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide. His music is periodically broadcast on the music television channel Mezzo as part of the ballet “Two Suns”.