User:Mogana/Harold Hagopian

Harold Hagopian is a third generation Armenian-American violinist, entrepreneur, record producer and founder of Traditional Crossroads world music record label.

Early Life
Harold Hagopian is the son of oud virtuoso Richard Hagopian. His paternal grandparents fled the 1915 Armenian Genocide and settled in California. Harold was raised on the family’s grape farm in Fresno where he discovered his love for music at a very young age. He was playing the drum along with his father at the tender age of 4 and continued his interest in music until he found his passion in violin playing at just 5 years old.

Personal Life
Harold Hagopian is married to Cynthia Rogers. Cynthia received her degree from the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education at Johns Hopkins University in 2005 and is Harold’s only assistant at Traditional Crossroads. They have two sons, Felix Hagopian-Rogers and Simon Hagopian-Rogers. Harold has an affinity for smoking cigars, which he picked up during his years at Juilliard.

Music career
Harold graduated from The Juilliard School in 1988 with a B.M. in classical violin. During his undergraduate career, Harold performed with the Juilliard orchestra. He also went to Russia where he practiced violin with local musicians in a Haydn quartet. In 1994, he performed with the Tulare County Symphony in California. The late Alan Hovhaness had written a violin concerto specifically for Harold, which he was able to premiere during a performance. Harold also plays the kanun and clarinet. Harold Hagopian is the director of the Cornell Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Music Ensemble (CMEME) at Cornell University. The CMEME performs traditional Middle Eastern music including Armenian, Turkish, Persian, Lebanese and Greek music. He received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School in Manhattan. Harold Hagopian has frequently accompanied his father, Richard Hagopian in performances in the past. He has performed in a number of ensembles with prominent Balkan artists such as Yuri Yunakov. Harold is also a consultant to the Silk Road Project founded by Yo-Yo Ma.

Business ventures
Harold Hagopian is responsible for bringing the Heifetz violin mute back to prominence. He co-founded a company which manufactures and sells the mutes, which had been discontinued in the 1960s.

Producing career
After he completed his undergraduate study at Juilliard, Harold took a job at P.P.I. Recording in New York City in order to learn more about the recording industry. This job served as a launchpad for Harold to further his career. He often used the studio to make recordings during his personal time. Harold also made records with his father for the British Arc label and Smithsonian/Folkways. Harold Hagopian cites Jascha Heifetz as one of his major influences in his career and his reason for procuring a job at RCA. Harold was offered a position as a reissue producer at RCA Victor/BMG Classics in 1990 after demonstrating his vast knowledge of the Heifetz recordings, style and repertoire in an interview with RCA producer Jack Pfeiffer. He was ultimately responsible for remastering and re-releasing over 1,000 classical music records in about just 10 years of his career at RCA.

Traditional Crossroads
Harold Hagopian used the same principles and techniques he had used in remastering and re-releasing classical music and applied them to world music. He founded Traditional Crossroads with Rounder Records in 1993 on this basis. Traditional Crossroads has been able to sponsor major US tours for dozens of international artists and the label has released over 150 albums. Hagopian continued working for RCA until 2002 despite the success of Traditional Crossroads.

Recognition
Hagopian’s works have been nominated for Grammys several times. His work on the Artur Rubinstein Collection later earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Reissue. In addition, Hagopian received Grammy nominations for The Complete Victor Recordings of Fritz Kreisler and Gypsy Fire. The National Association of Record Distributors awarded Best String Recording of the Year to The Art of Taksim, the first recording by Traditional Crossroads. The Voice of Komitas Vardapet received a French archival restoration award and Night Silence Desert received the best world music album from the Association for Independent Music (AFIM) in 2001. Harold Hagopian was featured in an Alumni Spotlight for the Juilliard School in November 2009.