TATEV doesn’t go by Tatev Yeghiazaryan professionally. Just TATEV. Sometimes TATEV WITH WINGS. It’s a small choice but a deliberate one, the kind that tells you something about how someone moves through the world without unnecessary weight.

Tatev is a composer bridging Armenia, jazz, and the sacred feminine.

She grew up in Armenia until she was fourteen, then her family moved to New York. That kind of transition could have fractured a kid’s sense of identity, but for her, it seemed to open everything up instead. Before the move, before new schools and new friends, there was always music. And before the piano, before anything else, there was her voice.

“Music was always there,” she says. “I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t.”
“My voice came first,” she explains. “The vocal cords. I don’t remember learning that. It was just there. Then, piano around five or six.


Most people wouldn’t think much about that order, but Tatev clearly has. She’s thought about it a lot. When you learn to sing before you learn an instrument, something fundamental shifts in how you approach music. You understand breathing. You understand phrasing. You know what it feels like to make sound come from inside your body, and that stays with you even when you move to keys and strings and orchestras.


Growing up, she listened to everyone. Ella Fitzgerald. Ray Charles. Mahalia Jackson. Stevie Wonder. Maurice Ravel. Gustav Mahler. Helen Merrill. Nina Simone. The list is ambitious in the way it refuses categories. She didn’t just listen passively. She studied these people. She wanted to understand how they did it, what made Ella’s phrasing so impossible to replicate, and what gave Ray Charles that soul that seemed bottomless.

“I grew up listening to jazz, classical, and Armenian folk music,” she says. “Those were my foundations.”



In college, she pursued both directions seriously. She earned a classical degree in piano performance. Then a separate degree in jazz studies. Composition she taught herself something, she mentions casually, as if it’s simply what you do when you’re compelled to write music. Right now she’s learning orchestration, and it’s consuming her in the best way. It’s the missing piece she needs to bring her symphony to life.
The way Tatev talks about performing with other musicians is different from how she talks about everything else. Her voice shifts. She becomes more animated.

“When you’re playing alone, you feel one thing,” she explains. “But when you add another person, a musician, a collaborator, that joy multiplies. And it keeps multiplying with every person you add. It’s exponential.”


She’s spent years composing for films and animations, working with directors, dancers, and other musicians. But one experience crystallised something for her: a tour through nine Colombian cities with fourteen different musicians, all of whom were sent and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Culture and Education as music ambassadors. The trip mattered in a way that’s still visible when she talks about it now.


“You’re in a different country, performing music with people from completely different backgrounds and traditions,” she reflects. “And somehow it works. You connect. That’s what music is for.”

On why live performance matters more than studio recording, her answer is clear: “When you are on stage, there is no more room for second-guessing. You must live, play and create in the moment and be in it fully, because it cannot repeat. You must give yourself to the present moment completely. That’s sacred to me.”


She’s written many pieces, but “Spring Dreams”  click here  holds particular weight for her. It’s about our connection to nature, but it’s also a critique of something much larger.

“The song talks about us all being interconnected and intertwined with Mother Nature,” she explains. “But my lyrics very clearly speak of us needing to unite and put an end to the patriarchal, separating systems of our current world culture. These systems are only about five thousand years old, and in that time they’ve suppressed us all and made us forget our wisdom and women-centred way of life.”

This isn’t abstract for her. You can hear it in how she talks about it. And she’s planning something bigger, a full symphony that explores these ideas on a larger scale, a work about mothers and daughters and roots and survival.


She’s written about four electronic songs that remain unreleased. Electronic music pulls at her in a different way than her classical and orchestral work. But what’s really occupying her now is her first symphony, something she’s been conceptualising for years and is finally ready to actually write.
It’s structured in three parts:

I. “In the Name of the Mother”

II. “The Daughter”

III. “The Holly Tree”


The progression moves from the generative principle of the mother, through the individual journey of the daughter, to the holly tree as something rooted and enduring. Once she explains it, you understand why it couldn’t be any other way.

“I can’t wait to start properly writing and orchestrating for the orchestra,” she says, “and then, of course, premiering it for the public hopefully in a year or two.”

Everyone wants to know the secret to getting past creative blocks. Most artists give flowery answers about inspiration striking at midnight. Tatev is not like most artists.
“You just stop listening to music for a while,” she says bluntly. “Go outside. Swim. Sit in a bathtub if that’s what you’ve got. Then after a week or so, you force yourself to sit down and write something. Even if it’s just three measures. Even if it sounds terrible. Composing is just like going to the gym or practicing anything really. You must do it and overcome the block.”

She’s firm about this: “It’s not about muses visiting one at night or suddenly being hit by inspiration. Of course that can happen too, but mostly the blocks are overcome by sitting down and writing and practising.”
But she does know when something’s finished. And her answer brings you back to that voice, the first instrument: “When you finish a sentence, the cadence of your voice drops, and you can feel you are done saying what you needed to say. Music is like that.”


Tavev also makes a point to be known that no matter what Tatev is writing, whether it’s a jazz piece or a classical composition or a film score, her Armenian heritage is there. It’s not a choice she makes consciously every time. It’s baked in.
“My Armenian background plays a big role in my music. No matter how jazzy or classical it might sound, there is always Armenianness in my melodies and harmonies, and that means quite a lot to me,” she states.
It’s not about quoting folk melodies or making things sound “authentically Armenian” in an obvious way. It’s deeper than that; it’s in the DNA of how she hears music and the choices she makes about what sounds right.


When asked what inspires her these days, her answer is revealing:
Open-minded, kind-hearted people. Mother Nature. Animals, especially cats. Languages. The way orchestration unfolds, how voices and instruments find their place, how they speak to each other.

Not an achievement. Not recognition. Not technical mastery as an end in itself. Connection. That’s what drives her. Connection to people, to the natural world, to the way sound can bridge gaps between cultures and times.
These inspirations aren’t separate from her music. They’re part of everything she creates.

She recently signed a contract with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. She and her partner just bought a home together. She’s about to disappear into her symphony for the next couple of years, turning years of conceptualising into actual music on the page.
When asked what advice she’d give young musicians, she doesn’t soften it: “Get into this world of music only if you are very determined. Be willing to learn music academically but also be an ear musician too. Only if you will not deflate with hard paths and only if you are willing to polish your ego before delving deep into the music industry.”


She also emphasises listening widely across genres and offers practical wisdom: “Have a person or two who are a good marketer for their promotional stuff because these days it often can help more than just raw talent, which is sad, but it is the truth.”

It’s advice that comes from someone who understands both the art and the business, who knows that talent alone, no matter how real, isn’t enough to sustain a life in music. You need determination. You need discipline. You need to be willing to learn from everyone around you. And you need to let go of the parts of your ego that will only slow you down.

For Tatev, music has always been about that, about reaching across the invisible distances between people and saying something that matters. That’s been true since she was a kid singing without thinking about it, and it’ll be true when she finally gets to premiere her symphony, a work that insists we remember what the mothers knew, that we honour the daughters walking their own paths, and that we plant ourselves deep and enduring like the Holly Tree.

Spending time with Tatev, you quickly understand what draws people to her. There’s a quality that’s hard to put into words, a kind of presence that makes you feel like she’s genuinely interested in what you have to say. She listens the way most people only listen when they’re alone with their own thoughts. And when she talks about the people and things she cares about, her whole face changes. Her eyes light up. You can feel how much it matters to her.

What strikes you most is how real she is, and as we know, “real” is rare nowadays. There’s no performance happening, no careful construction of an image. She’s just herself, thoughtful, kind, and a little bit humble about what she’s creating. When she talks about her work, it’s never about ego or recognition. It’s always about the connection, the moment, and the way music can bring people together across everything that usually keeps them apart. You see how seriously she takes that responsibility, and it’s moving.
She carries who she is, her Armenian roots, her years of training, and her values about what matters the way someone carries water in cupped hands. Carefully. Naturally. Like it’s just the way she moves through the world.

We at Armvault wish Tatev the best and hope you find joy in every part of composing, every collaboration, and every moment on stage. Your voice matters, the literal one and the one that comes through your music. Keep creating. Keep building those moments when people feel less alone. The world needs what you create. Don’t ever stop.