Anahid Marguerite Ajemian (January 26, 1924 – June 13, 2016)[1] was an American violinist of Armenian descent. Her career in contemporary music began from her desire to help young composers of her generation get their compositions performed.[2] Additionally, she enjoyed performing the music of established contemporary composers. She included these composers with the traditional repertoire in her performances.
Early life and education
Ajemian was born in Manhattan on January 26, 1924, to Armenian immigrant parents. Her father was a physician and her mother a pianist.[1] She began her music studies early at the Institute of Musical Art, which later merged with the Juilliard School. After graduating from the Lincoln School, Ajemian continued her education at the Juilliard School, studying violin with Édouard Dethier and chamber music with Hans Letz and Felix Salmon, and played in the Juilliard orchestra under Albert Stoessel and Edgar Shenkman.
Ajemian and her sister were equally known for their interpretations of the standard classical repertoire. A unique feature of the many television programs they taped for NBC's Recital Hall and the National Educational Television Network was their series of programs comprising the complete cycle of all ten Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano. They appeared as soloists under the batons of Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leopold Stokowski and Izler Solomon, and recorded with the latter two.
Also during the 1940s, Ajemian co-founded the New York City-based organization Friends of Armenian Music Committee, which did much to launch the career of fellow Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, via a series of well-received New York concerts of his music. These concerts were repeated in Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ajemian and her husband, George Avakian, started Music for Moderns, a Town Hall, in 1957.[3]
In the mid-sixties, Ajemian and her fellow violinist Matthew Raimondi founded the Composers String Quartet[1] at the suggestion of Gunther Schuller, which quickly earned an international reputation and toured in more than 26 countries, including the Soviet Union, India, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and China. The Composers String Quartet recorded extensively for the Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch Records, Composers Recordings, Inc. and Columbia Records among many others. The Quartet's 1970 recording of Elliott Carter’s "First and Second Quartets" was honored by a Grammy nomination, received “Stereo Review’s “Best Chamber Music Recording of the Year” Award, and was acclaimed by High Fidelity as “Best Quartet of the Year” and one of the “Fifty Greatest Albums of the Decade.” Time magazine called it “an astonishingly brilliant and unique achievement.”
