Aram Demirjian, Music Director
"Demirjian brought clear and graceful command to the podium. (His) conducting was fluid and varied, well capturing the tangled emotions of the overture."
- The Harvard Crimson on Aram's BachSoc debut
"Music Director Aram V. Demirjian '08 proved himself to be an excellent conductor, beyond his archetypal shock of hair - think Seji Ozawa - with his confident and expressive leadership."
- The Harvard Crimson, October 30, 2006
Biography
Aram Demirjian '08, from Lexington, Massachusetts, is a Music and Government concentrator in Adams House. As the 2006-07 Music Director of the Bach Society Orchestra, he led the orchestra in repertoire including Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, Barber's Adagio for Strings, Mozart's Prague Symphony, and Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Seventh Symphony. The 2007-08 season will be Aram's second as BachSoc Music Director.
Aram is also the Assistant Conductor of the Newton Symphony Orchestra. In spring 2007, he served as music director of the Adams House 75th Anniversary Festival Orchestra and led the premiere of the contemporary opera, The Sepulchre of Love, by Nicholas Vines, with the Harvard-Radcliffe Contemporary Music Ensemble. In 2005, Aram led the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players in a production of Ruddigore. He has appeared as a guest conductor of the Harvard Choral Fellows, of which he is a member, and also sings in the University Choir of Harvard Memorial Church. Aram is a board member of the Dunster House Opera Society. He has served as assistant music director of Harvard STAGE and appeared in concert with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and Lowell House Opera Society.
Aram received early training at the New England Conservatory, where he studied cello with Laura Blustein. He was a member of the NEC Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and principal cellist of the Youth Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Orchestra program. He currently studies voice with Frank Kelley of Boston University.
Aram is a conducting student of Jeffrey Rink, Longy School of Music, and Edward Jones of Harvard University. This summer, he will be attending the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors.
John Sullivan, Music Director-Elect
John Sullivan '09, a native of Cambridge, MA, is a music concentrator in Pforzheimer House. For the past two years he has served as music director and conductor of the Dunster House Opera Society, Harvard's all-undergraduate opera company. Under John's direction, DHO gave fully staged performances of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in 2007 and Così fan tutte in 2008. John was the Assistant Music Director for Melopoeia's 2006 productions of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Vaughan Williams's Riders to the Sea.
John is also an accomplished pianist; he has been playing since age six and has studied at the Longy School of Music, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the European American Musical Alliance program in Paris. He has studied for the past eleven years with Wayne Miller. He has been extensively involved in chamber music and accompanying of both singers and instrumentalists since coming to Harvard, appearing on campus in chamber music concerts, house concerts, Arts First programs and senior recitals. In May 2007 he music-directed and accompanied a concert of Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes and selections from operas by Mozart, Bizet and Verdi.
John sings tenor in the Choral Fellows of the Harvard University Choir under the direction of Edward Jones. He has studied voice for the past two years with Frank Kelley, and has studied conducting with Dr. Jameson Marvin of Harvard and Mark Shapiro of the Mannes College of Music.
View a list of all past music directors of the Bach Society Orchestra.