Arpine Kalinina

Arpine Kalinina is a composer and pianist born in Yerevan, Armenia. She completed her Master of Music degree in Composition with Professors Gary Carpenter and Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music in London, after obtaining her Master of Arts degree in Composition and Piano from the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory with Professors Levon Chaushyan and Maro Ghazaryan.

Her composer repertoire contains many works in different genres, including vocal and instrumental pieces, and music for string and symphony orchestras. Her music was performed in Armenia by leading collectives and musicians, including the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, the National Chamber Choir of Armenia, the Yerevan Quartet, soloists of the Armenian National Opera Theatre, and overseas, such as in Germany, Greece, China, the UK, Russia, and beyond.

Arpine received various grants and scholarships, among which are the Royal Academy of Music Bursary, the AGBU Performing Arts Fellowship, and the Hirair and Anna Hovnanian Scholarship. She is the recipient of the Russian Federation’s distinguished "Triumph" award and gold medal for the highest achievement in art as a composer (Moscow, 2010), and a finalist certificate from the Bartók World Competition for Composers for String Quartets in Hungary (Budapest, 2020).

In 2007, Arpine founded the Armenian classical music ensemble "Kantegh," where she served as the artistic director and principal pianist until 2021. For the ensemble's delivery of a series of concert-lectures on Komitas (a great Armenian composer), she received the special "Haykyan" award, granted by the third President of the Republic of Armenia, S. Sargsyan. She has organized several cross-cultural projects, such as the "Armenian and German Musical Bridge" (Cologne, 2024) and a "British and Armenian Music" project (Yerevan–London, 2017–present), for which five British composers wrote music inspired by Armenian poetry. She is also broadly involved in teaching and currently teaches Composition at the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory, as well as at the Sayat-Nova, Tigran Chukhajyan, and Paronyan Music Schools, and the Avet Terteryan Art School, where her students have earned major national prizes.

She is a board member of the Composers' Union of Armenia.