BOSTON — Cellist Maria Aristakesyan of Armenia, with Grigori Balasanyan on the keyboards and three other Berklee School of Music students, charmed an early evening audience at a celebration of Armenian culture and music and fundraiser organized by Berklee’s Armenian Scholarship Fund on July 30.
Aristakesyan is enrolled in Berklee’s five-week Aspire Summer Program. In Armenia, she studies at the Yerevan State Conservatory. She put together the band in about only three weeks after having just met the other members.
In addition, she performs with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra. She has collaborated with acclaimed artists such as Sergey Khachatryan, Yuja Wang, Lucas Debargue, Alban Gerhardt, Tigran Suchyan, Norayr Kartashyan, and Augustin Hadelich.
Maria’s first band, Artsakhikner, explored musical fusion, and she has since performed with the Dialog Music Project and Menua Band at Göteborgs Konserthus in Sweden. She has recorded and performed with the Artsakh State Jazz Orchestra and Three Bottles of Wine, as well as Artyom Manukyan, Arto Tunçboyacıyan and members of Roby Lakatos’s group.
Balasanyan, a composer and pianist originally from Armenia, just graduated from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where he was the student commencement speaker, and is about to start his master’s program there in the fall. His first opera, “Silent Tears,” became one of the few fully-staged student operas in the history of the conservatory, and tells the story of a 13-year-old Armenian girl he met during the 2020 war in Armenia.
The other performers are, like Aristakesyan, in the Aspire program, including vocalist Aimilia Chalkia from Greece, David Ju on the electric guitar from Australia and percussionist Riccardo Quell de Riso Paparo of Italy.
