TANYA GABRIELIAN is a Nora Naismith Scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she studies piano with Hamish Milne. She began her piano studies at the age of three in Southern California and was formerly a Shenson Scholarship student of John McCarthy and Erna Gulabyan in the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She was recently featured on the Public Radio International program From the Top and her performance was included in the first CD issued by this program. In January 2000, she was awarded the highest distinction (Level I) at ARTS (Arts Recognition and Talent Search) Week in Miami sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

In May 1999, as the first-place winner of the Pinault Musical Society International Piano Tape competition, Tanya performed at the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. Also that year, she won first prize in the California High School Performance Competition sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). Earlier, she was a Silver Medal winner at the California International Young Artists Competition and the first place winner of the Wayne Nadeau Festival and Competition for Outstanding Young Pianists of the West. She was also a winner of the Beethoven Young Pianist’s Competition. During the previous two years, Tanya received first place awards in the state concerto and solo competitions of the Music Teachers of California (MTAC). She was also awarded the grand prize in the Pacific Musical Society Scholarship Competition and was the first-place winner of the Fremont Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Piano Concerto Competition. In 1997, Tanya was the first runner-up in the Nationals Finals of the MTNA Junior High Baldwin Competition. Tanya previously performed as a piano soloist with the Fremont Symphony Orchestra, as well as several times with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra (PACO).

Tanya was invited to participate in the Holland Music Sessions in Bergen, Holland, in the summers of 1999 and 2000. Her trips were sponsored by grants from the Donald J. Isaak Piano Foundation and the Netherlands-America Foundation. She also attended the International Institute of Music at Marktoberdorf, Germany, during the summer of 1999 with a full scholarship. She attended the TCU/Cliburn Piano Institute in Fort Worth, Texas, during the summer of 1998 and studied piano at the International Institute for Young Musicians at the University of Kansas in the summer of 1997 under a full scholarship. Through various master classes and music sessions, Tanya has worked with John O’Conor, John Perry, Marie-Françoise Bucquet, Emilio del Rosario, Jane Allen, Seymour Lipkin, Jan Marisse Huizing, Christopher Elton, Lee Kum-Sing, Leonard Hokanson, Thomas Leander, Jura Margulis, and Tamás Ungár.

In addition to piano, Tanya plays violin and viola, starting her violin studies at the age of five. At the Royal Academy, she studies viola with Yuko Inoue. As a violinist, she was a member of PACO for eight years. She was also a member of the Baroque Sinfonietta for the duration of her violin studies in California.