formed in 1937.
Professor Hovhannes Tchekidjian has been an Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Choir since September 1961. The Choir, under the mentorship of Prof. Tchekidjian, has reached the highest level of performance and has been awarded numerous titles and prizes. The concert repertoire of the Choir is very rich and diverse. The Choir is famous for its unprecedented and unsurpassed performances of the major works by Komitas and other Armenian composers. In 1969, for its high professionalism and achievements, the Choir was granted the title of Academic Choir. The Academic State Choir of Armenia always performs its programs in original languages (more than 27 in total) and its programs include all major Requiems, Oratorios, Cantatas and Masses as well as other works by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rossini, Wagner, Schubert, Bellini, Berlioz, Gounod, Fauré, Smetana, Mendelssohn, Gershwin and others. Amongst its highest achievements are the First Prize at the Choral Contest of the USSR and the “Grand Prix” of the Paris Academy for the choral recordings.
Different newspapers of the world including Figaro, New York Times, The Boston Globe, Le Monde, Independent, Paris Mach, Meridional, Los Angeles Times, Macedonia, Le Soir, La revue du Liban, Le provençal and others have repeatedly praised the achievements and the professionalism of the Choir and its Artistic Director, Prof. Tchekidjian. The Choir had the honor to perform at famous halls as the Palais des Congrès, the La Sale Pleyel, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées of Paris, as well as the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Westminster Methodist Center Hall of London, the Salle Smetana of Prague, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Boston Symphony Hall, Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, Los Angeles’s Scottish Rite Auditorium, Moscow Conservatorium Hall and others. Among the recent achievements of the Choir is the “Prix du Public” of the International Festival in Montreux in 1999. The Choir concerts were attended by famous artists among them Irina Arkhipova, Elena Obraztsova, Yevgeny Nesterenko, Vladimir Atlantov, Maria Biesu, Paata Burchuladze, Nikolai Petrov, Lyubov Kazarnovskaya and many others.