Artyom Manukyan solo & duo w/ Vardan Ovsepian

Cellist Artyom Manukyan first made his name as a musician to watch in his native Armenia and traveled the world as the youngest member of the BBC World Music Award-winning Armenian Navy Band.

Currently living in Los Angeles, Artyom is equally at home on the stages of jazz clubs, concert halls and rock festivals, performing with major international artists including Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run-D.M.C., Grammy-winning Latin alternative rocker Draco Rosa, Natasha Bedingfield, scoring for film and television or leading his electro-jazz quartet. Artyom also performs on TV shows including Dr. Phil and Jimmy Kimmel Live where he has joined Coldplay, Bono and Odesza for performances.

Artyom’s genre-defying approach to playing the cello like a bass emerged from a combination of his conservatory training and exposure to the music of hallmark jazz bassists including Jaco Pastorius and Marcus Miller.

A native of Yerevan, the Armenian capitol, Artyom was influenced as a child by the music of both his mother, a classical piano teacher, and his father, a part-time DJ known as the biggest collector of jazz vinyl in Armenia. “We listened to jazz 27 hours a day in our house,” he says. “At the time I didn’t know a cello player who played jazz, so I copied what the bass players were doing.” Artyom spent five years completing his classical cello education at the State Conservatory, and began playing in jazz bands before joining the 12-piece “avangard folk” Armenian Navy Band in 2006, playing the bass as well as cello.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Artyom has been in demand as a session musician and soundtrack composer (Hannibal season 2, Dear White People season 2, Cartel Land, Zipper, Central Intelligence, Geostorm, Birth of a Dragon, Luke Cage), as well as performing live with diverse players (Everlast, Kamasi Washington, Melody Gardot, Daedalus, Flying Lotus, Peter Erskine, Hadrien Feraud, Charles Altura, MdCL, Tigran Hamasyan, Herb Alpert, Capital Cities, Vahagni, VOCE, Gretchen Parlato, Virgil Donati and many more). Artyom also was a guest artist at the 2016 New Direction Cello Festival.

After the success of his debut solo album, “Citizen”, Artyom has been touring and working on two upcoming albums due for release in 2018. First to launch will be a collaborative album with French electro jazz producer, Dawatile Kiledjian, titled “HILA”. The second will be a solo album titled “Alone”. In his free time, Artyom teaches private lessons and has been an invited guest teacher at the world-renowned Tumo Center for Creative Technologies.