Serouj Kradjian

Early life and education

Born in 1973, at fourteen earned a scholarship to study in Vienna, and was gaining accolades by the age of seven. He moved to Vienna at fourteen to pursue his training on a scholarship. He later studied with Marietta Orlov at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Piano Performance in 1994. He studied with Einar Steen-Nökleberg at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover, Germany, receiving a Solo Performance degree in 2001.

Performances

Kradjian has appeared with the Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton Symphonies, Göttingen Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, the Armenian Philharmonic and the Thailand Philharmonic under the baton of conductors such as Bramwell Tovey, Peter Oundjian, Stéphane Denève, Eduard Topchjan, Gudni Emilsson and Raffi Armenian.

Kradjian has performed solo and chamber music recitals in many world venues and he has been invited to perform at festivals such as the Bergen Festival, Savannah Music Festival, Colmar Festival and the Festival Del Sole- Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona, Italy. As a collaborative artist, Kradjian has appeared in concert with sopranos Dawn Upshaw, Isabel Bayrakdarian, baritone Russell Braun, tenor Michael Schade, violinists Cho-Liang Lin, Lara St. John, Ara Malikian and Jonathan Crow, violist Kim Kashkashian the Pacifica, New Orford, Cecilia String Quartets and Camerata Pacifica.

Composer

Works composed or arranged by Kradjian have been performed by the Toronto and Vancouver Symphonies, I Musici de Montreal, Fresno Philharmonic, the Armenian Philharmonic and the Elmer Iseler Singers. He was also founder and music director of Camerata Creativa in Madrid, Spain, a chamber orchestra dedicated to the performance of contemporary works.

His concerts have been broadcast by the CBC, Radio de la Suisse Romande, Radio and TV España, the BBC, the Süddeutsche Rundfunk and NHK Japan.

In the 2008/09 season Kradjian become the artistic director and pianist of the Amici Ensemble.

Discography

Kradjian's discography includes traversals of Franz Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and Piano Concerti on the Warner Music Spain label. “Miniatures”, an anthology of music written by Armenian composers, and Robert Schumann's three Sonatas for Violin and Piano (with Ara Malikian) are both Hänssler Classic releases. In 2002, he began working with soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, and their disc of songs by Pauline Viardot-Garcia was released in 2005, bringing the two artists, who are a married couple, a 2006 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year. He has explored and performed tango music which led to the disc “Tango Notturno” on CBC Records. His award-winning orchestral arrangements of folk songs by Gomidas – Armenia's national composer – were released as "Gomidas Songs" in 2008 on the Nonesuch label and nominated for a Grammy award. With the Amici Chamber Ensemble he has released http://www.allmusic.com/album/armenian-chamber-music-mw0001958900 in 2010, which was nominated for a Juno for Best Classical Album, & "Levant" Winner of the Juno for Best Classical Album 2013. "Troubadour & the Nightingale", an album of his original composition "Trobairitz Ysabella" and his arrangements of songs by Maurice Ravel and Sayat Nova, recorded on MCO Records by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra was nominated for Juno for Best Classical Album 2014

Awards

Kradjian has won the Chalmers Grant of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.

Personal life

A speaker of six languages, Kradjian lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with Isabel Bayrakdarian and their son, Ari, and daughter, Leah.