Since its inception back in 2017, the Armenia International Music Festival has been setting bold new standards in the world of classical music festivals. Boasting high production values and a roster of stars that includes some of the biggest names on the contemporary scene, the festival has emerged as a landmark event for music lovers from all around the world over the course of the past five years.
Now, as summer 2022 comes to a close, this storied festival shall be returning once again, for a 6th edition that will be organised by the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC) in collaboration with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra (ASSO).
Taking place between the 3rd of September and the 8th of October, this latest iteration of the festival, which shall be hosted in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, shall be presenting no fewer than seven symphonic concerts, featuring some of the most celebrated artists and musicians of our age in live performance.
Some of the headlining soloists who shall be travelling to Armenia over the festival’s four weeks include:
- multiple-time Grammy Award-winner, Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or and Avery Fisher Prize recipient, violinist Gil Shaham (USA);
- Metropolitan Opera Star, Grammy-nominated exclusive Decca Classics recording artist, award-winner at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition, winner of the 1998 Caruso Competition in Milan, prize-winner in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia (1999), featured soloist at the 2011 Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm, recipient of the 2014 International Opera Awards’ Readers’ Award, Malta’s first cultural ambassador since 2012, lyric tenor Joseph Calleja (Malta);
- exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, five-times recipient of the Record Academy Prize in Tokyo, three-times recipient of the Echo Deutscher Schallplattenpreis award and multiple Grammy Award-nominee, cellist Mischa Maisky (Israel);
- Founder and Leader of the Classe d'Excellence de Violoncelle at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, exclusive Erato (Warner Classics) recording artist, cellist Gautier Capuçon (France);
- Cultural Ambassador for Daejeon, Korea, Sony Classical published recording artist, Associate Principal of the Cincinnati Symphony, flautist Jasmine Choi (South Korea);
- First Prize and multiple Special Award winner of the 2021 Paganini Competition, violinist Giuseppe Gibboni (Italy);
- Gold Medal winner at the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition, exclusive Chandos Records recording artist, pianist Federico Colli (Italy), and many others.
The artists will be taking to the stage alongside the ASSO, who shall be occupying the role of Orchestra-in-Residence for this edition of the event. They will be led by a number of acclaimed international conductors, including Daniel Raiskin (Netherlands), Finnegan Downie Dear (UK), Hansjörg Schellenberger (Germany) and Armenian maestro Sergey Smbatyan, the Founder, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the ASSO.
Together, the musicians shall be presenting works from a variety of seminal historic and contemporary composers, interpreting pieces from the pens of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, Camille Saint-Saëns, Joseph Vella, Anatoly Lyadov, Niccolò Paganini, Pēteris Vasks, Antonio Vivaldi, Antonín Dvořák, Ottorino Respighi, Felix Mendelssohn, Claude Debussy, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor, to mention a few.
“The Armenia International Music Festival has now become a staple event on our annual calendar of events, eagerly awaited and anticipated by hundreds of people, both in Armenia itself and beyond, and I am very proud to state that we have spared no cost or effort to make sure that this latest edition shall be every bit as successful as all those that have come before. The calibre of the musicians at this year’s event is of the highest level possible, and I am confident that the festival shall once again prove to be a joyous and memorable occasion for all those who will be joining us here in Armenia” - Konstatin Ishkhanov, President of the EUFSC.