Tigran Arakelyan

Tigran Arakelyan is an Armenian-American conductor, podcaster and radio host. He is the Music Director of Northwest Mahler Festival, ORS of Tacoma, and the Port Townsend Symphony. As the Music Director of Federal Way Youth Symphony and Bainbridge Youth Orchestras, he has helped both organizations grow to their highest enrollment.

In 2019, he made his Walt Disney Concert Hall conducting debut and has played alongside Sir James Galway during his induction into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. Tigran is a prize winner in The American Prize for Orchestral Programming and the Global Music Awards. He has programmed diverse concerts with works by William Grant Still, Amy Beach, Alma Mahler, Fanny Mendelssohn, Vasily Kalinnikov and conducted regional premieres by renowned composers Paul Hindemith, Keith Jarrett and James Cohn. Since 2009, Tigran has taken orchestras to unconventional venues, from bars and cideries to cafes and ​homeless shelters.
 
Previously, he held conducting positions with the California Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra. He has initiated and is a founder of three orchestras, a music festival, a young composers competition, a young artist competition and numerous scholarship and funding initiatives. During his tenure, the Port Townsend Symphony saw unprecedented financial and audience growth.

Tigran led the Federal Way Youth Symphony on three tours to South Korea working in collaboration with Korean youth orchestras. He has conducted the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Olympia Chamber Orchestra, and the Armenian Pops Orchestra.

Tigran received the Ludovic Morlot Fellowship at the Pierre Monteux Festival and is a three time awardee of the AGBU Performing Arts Fellowship. Invited by Maestro Morlot, Tigran earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in from the University of Washington where he was the first student in the inaugural class of Morlot and Rahbee.

He has interviewed legendary artists: Evelyn Glennie, George Walker, Mark O'Connor, Christian McBride, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet), JoAnn Falletta, Richard Stoltzman, Sharon Isbin, Vijay Iyer, Christopher Theofanidis and a long list of others. Arakelyan is the host and producer of a radio show on KPTZ (91.9FM) called Exploring Music.