Garbis Aprikian

Armenian choral conductor and composer Garbis Aprikian was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1926. He began to study music seriously from the age of ten - piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue. He founded the mixed chorus Hamazkaine in 1948 and gave a series of concerts, which indirectly won him a scholarship to study in Europe. From 1953 he studied orchestral conducting and composition at the École normale in Paris and musical aesthetics at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen.

He was invited to conduct the Paris-based Armenian mixed choir Sipan Komitas and stayed with the choir for about fifty years, beginning in the 1950s.

As a composer he fused Armenian melodies with western classical music harmonies, producing both original works and arrangements, both of other Armenian composers' work and of Armenian folk music.

Garbis Aprikian died at his home in Malakoff, France on 15 October 2024, aged ninety-eight.

 

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