Suren Bagratuni, cello
Suren Bagratuni was born Yerevan, Armenia, where he attended the Tchaikovsky Centra Music School and the Komitas State Conservatory. He later studied with Nathalia Shakhovskaya at the Moscow Conservatory. He is the winner of the Silver Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Competition and first prize at the 1988 Vittorio Gui International Competition in Florence, where he also won the Special Chamber Music Award. A member of the Moscow Conservatory Trio, Suren Bagratuni is currently a professor of cello at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He plays a 1775 Marco Novello cello.