Tigran Hamasyan

An Armenian pianist born in Gyumri - then still part of the USSR - on July 17, 1987, Tigran Hamasyan learnt to play the piano with his family at the age of three, then at a music school at six. The son of a jeweler and a seamstress, he wanted to become a heavy metal musician, before discovering jazz, which turned him away from his initial passion. When he was ten, his family moved to the capital Yerevan, where he spent the next few years taking part in jazz festivals and meeting musicians such as Chick Corea, Avishai Cohen and French pianist and member of the Académie du Jazz, Stéphane Kochoyan, who helped him make a name for himself in Europe. An award-winning musician at several competitions and festivals, including Montreux, Moscow and Monaco, Tigran Hamasyan went on to study at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, where he won a first prize in piano in 2006, and then at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His music, with its dual influence of contemporary jazz and traditional Armenian music, has given rise to original, acclaimed albums. After his first recording, World Passion (2006), released in France on the Nocturne label, his discography expanded with New Era (2007) and Red Hail (2009), then continued on the Verve label with the solo album A Fable (2011), which won him a Victoire du jazz award, and Shadow Theater (2013), ranked #11 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. In 2015, the pianist invites the Yerevan State Chamber Choir on the album Luys i Luso, published by ECM, in which he develops themes from Armenian folklore and its composers, on the occasion of the centenary of the 1915 genocide. In 2016, he won the Echo Award in the jazz category for the collective album Atmosphères, produced with Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang. Signed by the American label Nonesuch Records, Tigran Hamasyan continues his exploration towards contemporary and electronic music with the albums Mockroot (2015), An Ancient Observer (2017, #12 on the Billboard Jazz chart), The Call Within (2020) and StandArt (2022), in which he revises some jazz standards in the company of Mark Turner, Ambrose Akinmusire and Joshua Redman. He has also taken part in sessions for other artists such as Dhafer Youssef, Lars Danielsson, Serj Tankian and LV, as well as with Michel Petrossian for the soundtrack to the film Bravo virtuose (2016). In 2024, he signed his first video game soundtrack, The Bird of a Thousand Voices, before signing the album Manifeste, fusing jazz, electronica and Armenian tradition.