Mikayel Balyan

Mikayel Balyan was born in 1981 in Jerewan/Armenia. He attended secondary schools with a focus on music in his hometown as well as in Moscow and went on to study piano with Rudolf Buchbinder at the Musik-Akademie Basel where he graduated with honors in 2004. Between 2005 and 2009 he continued his studies in the field of historical keyboard instruments at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen with Carsten Lohff as well as clavichord and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg with Menno van Delft and Volkhardt Preuß.

He then taught basso continuo and historical keyboard instruments at these universities from 2008 until 2012 before he moved to Basel with his family. At the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis he studied historical improvisation.

Mikayel Balyan gave guest performances as a soloist as well as with his chamber music partner Davit Melkonyan (violoncello) at festivals such as the Musikfest Bremen, the Tage Alter Musik in Herne and the Festival Radovljica, to name just a few. In 2012 he was awarded the Förderpreis (advancement award) of the Musikfest Bremen which led to CD recordings with Sony Music and deutsche harmonia mundi of all sonatas for pianoforte and violoncello by Bernhard Romberg and Johannes Brahms.