Şahan Arzruni

Şahan Arzruni, also transliterated Shahan Artsruni, was born in Istanbul on 8 June 1943, the son of Stepan Jirayr Arzruni and Maryam Kalpak. His family name is that of an ancient Armenian noble house. His maternal aunt, the composer Sirvart Kalpakyan Karamanuk, encouraged him to start the piano at four, and he gave his first public performance at five.

He was educated at the Esayan school and the Getronagan Armenian lyceum, and graduated from the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, now the Istanbul University State Conservatory, where he studied piano with Ferdi Statzer and harmony with Raşit Abed. In 1964 he moved to New York on a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to study at the Juilliard School, where his teachers included Sascha Gorodnitzki, Felix Galimir, Joseph Bloch and Hall Overton. He earned a Bachelor of Science in 1967 and a Master of Science in 1968, and later undertook doctoral studies at New York University.

From the late 1960s Arzruni toured as the straight man in Victor Borge's concerts, and he appeared with Borge at the 1980 Royal Variety Performance, where they played Borge's comic duet arrangement of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and several PBS specials, recorded for European radio networks including the BBC, and gave command performances at the White House and at the British, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic courts. Named a Steinway artist in 1994, he was invited to play an 1869 Steinway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to open the centennial of its historic instrument collection.

Alongside performing he worked as an ethnomusicologist and writer. He researched traditional Armenian music, recorded a three-disc anthology of Armenian piano music and co-produced an eight-disc set of Armenian instrumental and vocal music. He gave papers and organised symposia at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan, lectured on Armenian liturgical chant at the Library of Congress in 2001, and contributed to The New Grove Dictionary and the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. His recordings included Komitas: Complete Works for Piano (2011), Hommage: Piano Works by Early Armenian Composers (2014), Alan Hovhaness: Selected Piano Compositions (2019) and By Women: Piano Works by Armenian Women Composers (2024).

In 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2024 he travelled through the provinces of Armenia and Artsakh coaching young musicians and giving recitals, and photographed remote monasteries for a series of articles in the Istanbul monthly Paros. During the Covid-19 pandemic he curated Together for Armenia, a series of online mini-concerts to raise funds for Armenia.

Arzruni lived in Manhattan for most of his adult life while remaining closely tied to the Armenian community of Istanbul, where he was regarded as one of its most prominent artists. He worked to preserve the music of his aunt, Sirvart Karamanuk, and Armenian reports said he supported a home for the elderly in Vanadzor dedicated to her memory.

Arzruni was found dead at his home in Manhattan, New York, on 21 October 2026. He was 83. The Istanbul Armenian newspaper Agos and other outlets reported his death that day, and no cause of death was announced.

Arzruni is remembered as a performer who carried Armenian piano music to international audiences and as a researcher and producer who documented it on record. His honours included the Renaissance Medal (1993), the Order of St. Sahak and St. Mesrop (1996), an honorary professorship from the Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan (2008), Armenia's Presidential Movses Khorenatsi Medal and the Knights of Vartan Award (2018).