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YEREVAN, APRIL 20, ARMENPRESS. Prominent pianist Tigran Hamasyan won ECHO Jazz Awards 2016, Germany, “Armenpress” reports citing nonesuch.com website.
Tigran Hamasyan was named International Instrumentalist of the Year, Piano, for his Nonesuch Records debut album “Mockroot”.
The ECHO Jazz awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States.
The ECHO Jazz 2016 Awards ceremony will take place in Hamburg on May 26.
Tigran Hamasyan was born in 1987 in Gyumri. He began playing piano at the age of three, and started performing in festivals and competitions when he was 11 years old, winning the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003. He released his debut album, World Passion, at the age of 18 in 2006. That same year he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Subsequent albums include New Era (2008), Red Hail (2009), and A Fable (2011), for which he was awarded a Victoires de la Musique (the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France). Most recently he won the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Contemporary Music in 2013. In 2015 he initiated the musicel program called “Luys i Luso” (Light of Lights) devoted to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.