Gevorg Dabaghyan

Gevorg Gourgeni Dabaghyan, born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1965, is one of Armenia’s best living duduk players, and certainly the most accomplished of his generation. He has won many awards, including the grand prize at the international Eastern Traditional Instruments competition in 1990, and the grand prize in the Sayat Nova duduk competition in both 1991 and 1992. He began studying duduk after middle school at the Romanos Melikian Music Institute and from 1984 to 1989 attended the prestigious Komitas State Conservatory. He continued his post-graduate studies at the Conservatory under K. Avetisian until 1992. Dabaghyan has performed around the world in the past decade and recorded extensively. He is featured on more than 50 recordings in the Armenian National Radio archives and as a soloist on several movie soundtracks, including Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002) and the Iranian film Miss Maria (2001). The CDs Armenia Anthology, featuring the Shoghaken Ensemble, which Dabaghyan founded in 1991, and Miniatures, a collection of solo duduk repertoire, were released in the United States on the Traditional Crossroads label. Known for his melodic expressiveness, Dabaghyan has also greatly expanded the repertoire of Armenia’s archetypal folk instrument. He was the first to play Armenian church music on the duduk and the first to use a traditional Armenian instrument to accompany new symphonic and choral works by contemporary Armenian composers, including Vache Sharafyan’s The Morning Scent of the Acacia’s Song, which Dabaghyan performed along with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project chamber ensemble throughout Europe and the US. Other notable performances with Shoghaken include concerts at Theatre De La Ville in Paris, France. the ‘White Nights’ festival in St. Petersburg and the Rudolstadt Festival in Rudolstadt, Germany. A much sought-after collaborator, Dabaghyan has also performed recently in concerts with the violinist Gidon Kremer, conductor Yuri Bashmet and the jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek.