Tamara was born in Yerevan, Armenia. She began studying violin in 1984 at the Sarajev School of Music under Professor M. Tsatourian, adding piano the following year with Professor H. Ousikovna alongside coursework in solfège, harmony, music theory, dictation, analysis, and music literature. During her final two school years she joined the Arevik folk-music ensemble outside of school. She graduated from Sarajev with top marks in 1992, and the same year won the entrance competition and a scholarship to the Arno Babajanyan University of Music in Yerevan, where she studied violin with R. Mamikinyan, A. Khachatryan, and G. Simbatyan, and piano with O. Haroutounyan. She performed steadily through her conservatory years — as soloist, in duos and ensembles, and with orchestra — and graduated in 1997.
After graduation she continued performing with Arevik and began writing her own songs — composing lyrics, piano arrangements, and vocal lines — recording one at Artzagang Studio for the Bohem Competition on Armenian television. She took vocal lessons with her wonderful teacher R. Martirosyan, developed an improvisational jazz vocabulary at the piano and violin, and began taking on her first private students.
In the summer of 1998 she was offered two teaching positions in Aleppo, Syria — one at the Barsegh Ganatchian Armenian Music School, one at the Arabic Institute of Music — and chose to stay in Syria. From 1998 to 2000 she conducted the chamber orchestra at Barsegh Ganatchian, and from 2002 to 2007 served as concertmaster of the Hamazkayin Cultural and Educational Association’s Armenian Folk Chorus and Orchestra. At the Arabic Institute of Music, where she taught violin and piano from 1998 to 2007, she met fellow violinist Fadi Iskandar; she also played with the institute’s Aleppo Chamber Orchestra and its Arabic orchestra, performing in solos, duets, and quartets across Aleppo, Damascus, and Kuwait.
From 2003 to 2008 she toured internationally with the Lebanese star Majida Al-Roumi, performing in Canada, Australia, Ivory Coast, Qatar, Tunisia, and Algeria. Closer to home she taught from 2000 to 2012 at a private school called Bally — with what she remembers as lots of wonderful talented students — and from 2004 to 2007 at the Faculty of Music of Al-Baath University in Homs. Eventually she and Fadi opened their own private music school in Aleppo, where she taught and directed the piano program; she continued giving solo concerts and performing duets with Fadi and with guitarists, and made a habit of leaving time for her students’ questions on piano, violin, theory, and harmony.
Tamara moved with her family to Tucson in August 2012, due to the extreme violence in Syria. Since then she has performed solo and duet programs at the Tucson International Alliance of Refugee Communities, the Iskashitaa Refugee Network, Grace to the Nation Church, the Arizona Senior Academy, and the YWCA, and presented Arabic and Armenian music for World Refugee Day in 2017, among other venues. She has played with the Arizona Symphony Orchestra (first and second violin), and performed as a soloist at the Desert Museum’s music festival, at Chamberlab Tucson 2016, and at Tucson Meet Yourself each year. She has taught violin and piano at the Music and Dance Academy since 2015, and since 2017 has tutored Armenian through the Critical Languages Program at the University of Arizona. In 2019 she received the Master–Apprentice Award from the Southwest Folklife Alliance, and each year now brings invitations to play in courtyards.
Fadi was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1971. He studied violin at the Arabic Institute of Music in Aleppo under Avedis Manoukyan, graduating in 1986, and continued his training at the same institute through 1993 with Rostislav Medvedev, Sergey Yevdokimov, and Ali Mukhtar Babaiev. He also graduated from the Teachers’ Preparation Institute in Aleppo in 1990, where he taught violin and solfège from 1990 until 2012.
Alongside solo concerts in Aleppo and Latakia, he joined the Syrian Philharmonic Orchestra in Damascus in 1993 and the Aleppo Chamber Orchestra in 1995, serving as its director from 2000 to 2008 and performing with the ensemble across Aleppo, Latakia, Damascus, and Turkey. In 1999 he played first violin with the Aleppo Quartet at the Conference of Arabic Music in Damascus.
In 2001 he married Tamara Khachatryan, and the two have since performed together — as soloists, in quartet, and with classical and oriental orchestras — across Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Tunisia, Algeria, Canada, Ivory Coast, and Australia. He has also appeared with numerous Arabic orchestras and with the Opera Orchestra of Armenia in the U.S., U.A.E., Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.
Fadi moved to Tucson in November 2012. Since then he has performed solo, duet, and orchestral programs for the University of Arizona, Tucson Meet Yourself, the Music and Dance Academy, TUSD, the Pima County Public Library, the 2018 Refugee Resettlement Summit in Phoenix, World Refugee Day, the Iskashitaa Refugee Network, and area churches. He has taught at the Music and Dance Academy since 2017, and in 2018 received the Master–Apprentice Award from the Southwest Folklife Alliance in Tucson.