Maro Ajemian

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Maro Ajemian (July 9, 1921 – September 18, 1978) was an American pianist. Ajemian's career in contemporary music got its impetus from the fact that she is of Armenian descent.^[1].

Ajemian studied at the Juilliard School of Music and beginning in the 1940s, together with her sister, the violinist Anahid Ajemian, she became known as a champion of new music, presenting the premieres of many new works by American composers. Among these were John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, Henry Cowell, Ernst Krenek, Lou Harrison, and Gunther Schuller.

On March 14, 1942, she gave the American premiere of Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto in D flat, with the Juilliard Graduate Orchestra under Albert Stoessel.^[2]

Ajemian was particularly fond of the music of Hovhaness (a fellow Armenian American), and co-founded a New York City-based organization, the Friends of Armenian Music Committee, which promoted his music during the 1940s, presenting annual concerts in such high profile venues as Town Hall. These concerts were well reviewed by such critics as Lou Harrison, Virgil Thomson, and Olin Downes, and served to launch Hovhaness into the national spotlight.

She died of heart valve failure at the age of 57.

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