THE KEYS TO HIS FUTURE
By Joyce Rudolph
Glendale News Press, CA
July 14 2007
Pianist Hovsep Hajibekyan will be performing at the Brand Park Recital
Hall in Glendale Saturday.
Hovsep Hajibekyan took the year off from college to pursue a personal
goal – to perfect his talent on the piano.
The Glendale resident is calling his public recital today a final
test that will show how much he improved over the year, he said.
"It’s one thing to play well, but it’s another thing to perform in
front of people an entire program and manage to keep the concentration
and not let nerves take hold of you," he said. "It’s part of the
learning process. it’s part of this quest to improve."
For the last three months he has been practicing three hours a day
in preparation for the recital, he said.
In addition, he has been working as an usher at the Los Angeles Music
Center and has watched the professionals, picking up their nuances
along the way, he said.
"I got to hear amazing concerts and learned valuable lessons from
listening and watching others perform," he said. "It was a paid
education."
Hajibekyan is now a lot more confident with his playing, he said,
and is enthusiastic about his recital.
The program consists of works by Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arno Babajanyan, he said.
Hajibekyan’s former instructor, Jungwon Jin, a Glendale Community
College adjunct professor, recently heard him play Babajanyan’s
"Vagharshapat Dance."
"I was not familiar with the piece and he was able to communicate
it to me and make me understand it," she said. "And it’s a very
beautiful piece, and a very interesting piece, because it has Armenian
folk tunes in it. He was able to bring out the folk quality of its
Armenian origin."
Born in Armenia, Hajibekyan started the piano when he was 8. But it
wasn’t until he was much older that he became serious about playing,
he said.
His family moved from Armenia to Glendale in 2000. He graduated from
Glendale High School four years later and continued taking private
lessons on and off, he said.
The 21-year-old political science major completed two years of study
at Glendale Community College and was accepted to UCLA and UC Berkeley.
He starts UC Berkeley in August, and will work toward a bachelor’s
degree and then his master’s, he said. He is intrigued by foreign
policy and the political process here and abroad and is hoping for
a career with the state department, he said.
But music is his personal goal.
"I know how I want it to sound, but the hard part for me is how to
get it across, in a technical aspect," he said. "I want to play as
well as I can."
He is not hoping to become a concert pianist, because that takes more
dedication than he is willing to give, he said. But he wanted to rid
himself of some bad habits at the keyboard and believed this was the
perfect opportunity to take a break from his studies and dedicate
the time to his music, he said.
"Once you finish college, life sucks you in, [and there is] not much
time for fixing things on personal level," he said.