Hitting the High Notes: Cello Artist Arpenik Hakobyan’s Star Shines Bright in Cirque Du Soleil

She elaborated: “I adore classical music, but I was always the person who would play [something] a little different. This is why I choose jazz. In Cirque Du Soleil I am a jazz musician,” even though it’s not a “main stream choice for a cello.” Arpenik is convinced that in this way she has her own place in the music industry that truly belongs to her.

The choice to play cello came by accident – or maybe not, as she likes to think, she explained accompanied by a deep smile. She was seven and a half, when her mother (did I mention that she is Lida Hakobyan, an actress and director!) decided that she needed to take violin classes. When Arpenik arrived to the music school for the admission exams, she was very much impressed upon hearing the word cello in Armenian. “When they asked me if I wanted to play a violin or a cello, the word cello [in Armenian] sounded so fascinating and beautiful, that I said ‘I want to play cello’ without even knowing what that instrument was,” remembers Arpenik with an innocent laugh.

Arpenik inherited her artistic background from her mother. She was on the stage with her from a very young age performing in different plays. Her personality started to take shape right there in the theater, where she was always encouraged to enjoy freedom of expression. But this entire precious framework needed to be refined abroad, which Arpenik finds the only way to be successful in art and in any other profession in general.

She said: “I had different teachers and each one of them promoted different schools. During the years that I studied in Belgium, I learned everything about the sound of the cello and techniques. In the US, I was introduced to jazz music: how to express myself, how to let go and all the things that I didn’t learn in Belgium. In Armenia I had a rough Soviet structured education; I studied piano, solfeggio, harmony, theory and cello. It was very good for a beginning, because when I continued to study in the conservatory, I was one of the few who knew a lot about music already. All these were incorporated into me.”

Between constant travel between Armenia and the US, Arpenik is waiting for life to get back to normal after the pandemic, when she expects to continue her career with the Cirque Du Soleil tour of 2022 in North America, through both Canada and the United States. She continues providing music classes (now online) to various students, children and adults, who want to learn how to play cello or to ameliorate their skills.

In Armenia, she is continuing her humanitarian initiative, creating job training programs for women. She started it last year. It will primarily help women who either lost their husbands, fathers or brothers during the war in Artsakh, or are obliged to take care of those who became disabled in their family, and are now the main breadwinner. This program is teaching women to become culinary experts and helping them to find employment after graduating.