NEW YORK — World-renowned concert pianist, musician, and musicologist Şahan Arzruni drew his final breath in the early hours of October 21 in America, at his home in New York City. His favorite items, which he enjoyed throughout his life, were raw oysters, bulghur pilaf, tangerine color, and vodka.
These are the words Şahan himself set down to serve as the coda to his life. Direct, concise, and touched with his characteristic wit, they convey something essential about the man—and his determination to describe himself on his own terms.
Yet they can scarcely encompass the life of a man who devoted his singular, extraordinary gifts to the worldwide Armenian community. Those gifts embraced the whole range of the musical arts: from performance to composition, from rarefied scholarship to the popular promotion of Armenian music around the world.
He was born on June 8, 1943, in Istanbul, to Stepan and Mariam Arzruni. As a very young boy he was recognized as a musical prodigy and came under the tutelage of the most eminent European musical instructors in Istanbul. This was due to the influence of his beloved aunt, Sirvart Karamanuk — herself a composer of profound talent, whose work and memory Şahan would honor throughout his life.
In 1964, Şahan left Istanbul, and a noted career as a young pianist, to attend the Juilliard School in New York. America’s greatest city would become his home for the next six decades, as Şahan Arzruni built an international reputation as a concert pianist, ethnomusicologist, and public figure in the arts.
Şahan’s achievements as an artist were profound, as the formal biographical notes below attest. He was proud to be honored as a Steinway Artist: a title bestowed only on the most distinguished pianists in the world. Indeed, one could only marvel at Şahan’s soulful interpretations of Chopin and the rest of the classical repertoire.
