SERGEY KHACHATRYAN was born in 1985 in Yerevan, Armenia. In December 2000 he won First Prize in the VIII International Jean Sibelius competition in Helsinki, becoming the youngest winner in the history of the competition. In 2005 he claimed the First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.

Khachatryan has performed with all the major UK orchestras, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, and regularly with the Philharmonia Orchestra. In July 2005 he made his debut at the BBC Proms with the BBC Philharmonic performing the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1.

His international profile has developed through collaborations with orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France with Kurt Masur, and the Frankfurt Radiosinfonieorchester with Daniel Harding.

In August 2005 he made his debuts at the Ravinia and Blossom festivals, and in March 2006 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra before undertaking a major U.S. concert tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, including venues in Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. In the summer of 2006 Khachatryan made his New York debut performing the Beethoven Concerto in the Mostly Mozart festival.

His 2006/07 season opened with performances of the Beethoven Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London under Christoph von Dohnányi, and continued with the RSO Berlin and Marek Janowski, the Munich Philharmonic with James Conlon, and the Orchestre National de Belgique at the BOZAR in Brussels.

Recent highlights include the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra - both with Kurt Masur - and the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Bernard Haitink, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Berliner Philharmoniker with Yuri Temirkanov, and the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas. He makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl debuts with tonight's performance.

This season he has performed recitals with his sister Lusine Khachatryan at the Wigmore Hall London, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and the National Auditorium in Madrid, and in April he debuted at Carnegie Hall. He also returns to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Following the success of his Sibelius Concerto recording released in October 2003, Khachatryan's relationship with Naïve Classique continued with a double Shostakovich concerto disc with the ONF and Masur. As winner of the 2005 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Khachatryan plays the 1708 'Huggins' Stradivarius violin, on loan to him from the Nippon Music Foundation.

08/07