Meet Michael Krikorian

 

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Krikorian.

Hi Michael, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Growing up playing video games played a huge role in sparking my interest to pursue a career in music. This might be surprising considering my background is mainly in classical music, but the music from the games I played as a kid has a special way of burrowing itself deep into one’s ear. This compelled me to sit down at the piano to search and peck my way through my favorite tunes before I had any formal training. Oddly enough, It was a ringtone on my dad’s cell phone that inspired me to seriously pursue classical music. The ringtone was the fugue subject from J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, but to me it sounded like something from my favorite video game soundtrack of all time – Super Castlevania IV by Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo. My dad is an organist and was able to teach me how to play most of the fugue before I started my formal piano lessons at the age of 12.

I went on to earn my undergraduate degree in Piano Performance from California State University, Fresno, my Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and my Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California. I have spent summers performing in Italy, France, South Korea, China, and throughout the USA.

Presently, I perform, compose, and teach, and In July 2021, will be teaching as a guest artist in the California State University Summer Arts course titled “The Art of Scoring For Video Games” alongside a stellar group of composers that includes Garry Schyman, Edouard Brenneisen, Jason Hayes, and Peter Scaturro.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Along the way, I have hit a few bumps in the road, one of which was a devastating injury to the index finger of my right hand. I had a displaced fracture which required surgery and pins. As a musician, the ability to play music is fundamentally tied to my sense of identity, so the idea of losing that ability, or having it be forever stunted, is existentially terrifying. This injury happened only four months before my senior recital at Fresno State, so I had to scramble to learn a program consisting of music composed for the left hand alone. The silver lining of this experience was that it revealed to me the huge body of literature of piano music composed solely for the left hand. Many of these works were commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who lost his right hand in WWI. Thankfully, I have made a full and successful recovery post-surgery, and have composed a few pieces myself for the left hand.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a pianist, composer, and music educator. I especially enjoy performing music by Russian composers, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin being two of my favorites. Scriabin’s harmonic idiom resonates with me, so it tends to seep into my own music. There are distinctive Scriabin flavors in my Prelude and Nocturne for the left hand alone, a set of pieces that were actually composed as an homage to Scriabin and inspired by his own Prelude and Nocturne, Op. 9.

As a composer, I am most proud of my original score for The Fidelio Incident (Act 3 Games), a video game loosely based on Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio. Video game music inspired me to dedicate my life to music, so it is tremendously fulfilling for me to now be a credited video game composer myself. As a performer, my proudest accomplishment is the concert I performed in Fall 2019 as part of the Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Concerts series in Fresno, California. The first classical piano concert I attended was part of this series, and I remember feeling so inspired and intimidated by the prospect of learning a full concert program of music. The prominent San Joaquin Valley arts journalist, Donald Munro, listed my recital as one of the top 20 cultural events in the Central Valley for the year 2019 in his online publication, the Munro Review.

I believe my versatility sets me apart from others. I am a professional pianist, compose music for the concert stage and video games, and teach music. It takes serious dedication and commitment to do any one of those things at a high level. I’m really passionate about music and find great fulfillment in experiencing it in as many different ways as possible.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
One of my earliest memories is waking up to the sound of my two older brothers playing video games on the NES. I ran to join them and just sat and watched as they played through the Legend of Zelda, combing through Nintendo Power for tips and secrets. I enjoyed watching them play because it felt like I was a part of the action even though I lacked the skills to contribute in any meaningful way, and we were all on this journey together working towards a shared goal. That’s why video game music is so special to me – I associate it with that warm and fuzzy nostalgia of a simpler time in which I could just spend all day hanging out with my siblings and playing games together. I was initially drawn to the piano because it was a conduit for channeling this feeling, but over time I realized its true potential. Music is the most potent form of emotional communication, and the piano offers nearly limitless expressive possibilities. This is what motivates me to keep practicing.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.michaelkrikorianpianist.com
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelKrikorian
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/michael-krikorian