Dr. Richard Martirosian, DO was born in New York on November 14, 1990. He is a first generation American from a mixed cultural background of an Armenian father and Trinidadian Mother. He became immersed in classical music at a young age.
He listened to everything he could get his hands on from operas to symphonies, chamber music, concerti, solo works, etc. He started practicing piano at the age of 8 and shortly began composing on his own and continues to create music to this day.
The death of his grandmother at the end of high school was a turning point for him. He became set on pursuing a career in medicine entering CUNY Queen’s College as a Biology Major. During college, he began an internship conducting research in anesthesiology at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and volunteered at New York Hospital Queens. After college, he began work at CityMD where he gained practical experience in healthcare.
In 2013, Richard began his medical studies at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and having graduated in May of this year, has now taken on the responsibilities of a resident physician in Family Medicine at Nassau University Medical Center.
Although his focus shifted to medicine, he knew that music is an inseparable part of life and that he would live in the duality of Medicine and Music. Richard let his experiences in the medical field help shape his creations. In his music, there is a reflection of struggle that has fallen upon the sickly, and in it, he hopes to give resolve to both harmony and to the sick.
The diversity of music influencing his studies comes from a number of backgrounds such as Germany, Russia, Poland, Italy, Spain, France, and Armenia. Having never come to terms with the idea of having a sole cultural heritage within himself, he drew from a broader musical perspective.
His greatest influences are Chopin, J.S. Bach, Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Grieg, Faure, Glazunov, Khachaturian, Shostakovich, Paganini, Kapustin, Langgaard, Rangstrom, Roussel, Humperdinck, Bruch, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Reger, Feinberg, Godowsky, Elgar, Korngold, Bax, Ives, Prokofiev, Leoncavallo, Stravinsky, Hummel, Gnatalli, Rosza, Respighi, Dukas, Pfitzner, Czerny, Liszt, Gounod, Berlioz Karłowicz, Schubert, Haydn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Taneyev, Cui, Catoire, Tchaikovsky, Gerswhin, Henselt, Alkan, Schoenberg, Bartok, Bantock, Dohnanyi, Ysaÿe, d’Albert, Hindemith, Huber, Hanson, Komitas, Bagdassarian, Babajanian, Aratounian, Hovhaness, Weber, Scharwenka, Massenet, J. Marx, Poulenc, Moszkowski, Brahms, Schumann, Gliere, Mozart, Zemlinsky, Bizet, Saint-Saens, Delius, Holst, Schreker, Barber, Gramados, Albeniz, Rodrigo, Szymanowski, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Mascagni, de Falla, Janacek, Dvorak, Debussy, Ravel, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Busoni, Bruckner, R. Strauss, Wagner, Mahler and many others.
Having been self-taught, he considers them to be the closest thing to a mentor. At last, with the reverberation of their music, he is finding his own voice echoing in the distance of their works.
This long road of schooling and study has not hindered Richard’s compositional output. Richard’s fiancé, Wieslawa Zarkowska, a recent violin performance graduate from the Conservatory at CUNY Brooklyn College recently gave a performance of one of his solo violin sonatas, Sonatas No. 1, Op. 8 in A minor.
In another video, Richard introduces himself and gives a performance of the first movement of his Piano Sonata No. 1 in B flat minor “Sonata-Fantasie.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF37selOVCs
Richard has published a few of his works for sale on lulu.