Karo Zakaryan
Karo Zakaryan was an Armenian Soviet composer and conductor. He was born in Van, in the Ottoman Empire, on December 15, 1895.
From 1916 to 1918, he studied special music theory with Sergei Lyapunov at the Petrograd Conservatory. He later studied composition with Nikolai Tcherepnin and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Tbilisi Conservatory. From 1921 to 1929, he worked as a choirmaster and teacher at the House of Armenian Art in Tbilisi. He moved to Yerevan in 1929 and taught choral studies at the conservatory. From 1938 to 1953, he directed the Yerevan Radio Choir.
Zakaryan collected Kurdish folk songs and composed music based on Armenian folk traditions. He was known chiefly as a choral composer. His works included the operas Little Brother Lamb (1924), Marjan (1941), and Agasi (1952); the ballet Pioneers (1936); the cantata My Native Country (1943); and the choral poem Hrazdan (1955). He also wrote orchestral music, a sonata for violin and piano, pieces for cello and piano, and choral suites.
Zakaryan received the title of Honored Artist of the Armenian SSR in 1939 and People's Artist of the Armenian SSR in 1960. He died in Yerevan on May 11, 1967.