Serouj Kradjian

Juno award winning Armenian-Canadian pianist and composer Serouj Kradjian has been described as "a keyboard acrobat" of "crystal virtuosity", having "fiery temperament and elegant sound" with "a technique to burn." Serouj Kradjian is an exclusive recording artist of Warner Music Spain.

Early life

Serouj Kradjian began his studies at the age of five, and by seven had won a National Competition for Young Musicians. At fourteen he earned a scholarship to study in Vienna, and later studied with Marietta Orlov at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, where he earned a B.A. in Piano Performance in 1994. He studied with Einar Steen-Nökleberg at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover, receiving the coveted Solo Performance degree in 2001.

Performances

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

Solo and chamber music recitals have taken Kradjian from such Canadian cities as Toronto (Roy Thomson Hall and Toronto Centre for the Arts), Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Vancouver (Orpheum Theatre), and Edmonton (Winspear Centre), via the U.S – New York (Carnegie Hall), Atlanta (Spivey Hall), Miami, Chicago (Cultural Center) and Los Angeles – to European concert halls in Paris, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Munich, Salzburg, Trondheim, Lausanne, Geneva, Nicosia, Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao and to the Far East in Bangkok,Thailand and Tokyo,Japan. He has been invited to prestigious festivals, amongst them, the Bergen Festival, Savannah Music Festival, Colmar Festival and the Festival Del Sole- Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona, Italy.

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

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

Discography

Serouj Kradjian's discography includes the highly acclaimed 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, international accolades and a 2006 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year. He has especially enjoyed exploring and performing tango music which led to the critically acclaimed disc “Tango Notturno” on CBC Records. His orchestral arrangements of folk songs by Gomidas – Armenia's national composer – were recently recorded and will be released in 2008 on the Nonesuch label.

Broadcasts

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.

Awards

Mr. Kradjian's talent has been acknowledged by the Chalmers Grant of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.

Artist's website

www.serouj.com