Honored Teacher of Armenia
Shake Zakaryan was born on March 5, 1919, in Aleppo (Syria), where Armenian families came from Erzerum (in Historical Armenia: Karin) after the Armenian Genocide of 1915, losing their families and relatives. Having lost his wife (before that well-known event), Aram Zakarian was left only with his three-year-old daughter Sirarpi. When the girl was among a mass of refugees, she once asked a young woman to comb her hair. The young woman was Asya Tazhoyan. Aram told her: “Tomorrow they will come to choose concubines, you may say that you are my wife”. So he saved the young woman from being disgraced. Aram and Asya decided to marry. In Syria, Izabella and Shake were born. Later, after long wanderings, they settled in Tbilisi. Here the father bought a piano for his daughters. However, the happiness did not last long. Shake was seven years old when her father died. With her backbreaking work (she was known as a skilled dressmaker), the mother managed to raise three daughters.
Shake had musical talent from childhood and dreamed of becoming a pianist. She entered the Tbilisi Music College in the piano class of the famous teacher Nasibova. Constantly and successfully participating in the school’s concerts, Shake decided to continue her musical education and entered the Tbilisi State Conservatory in the class of Professor Ilya Iceberg. She graduated from the conservatory with honors (the chairman of the state examination commission was the famous professor of the Moscow State Conservatory, Alexander Goldenweiser).
During her student years, Shake Zakarian met her future husband, cellist Alexander Chaushian. In 1944, she and her husband moved to Yerevan. In the mid-1950s, a family of young musicians received a large room in a communal apartment in a house where teachers from the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School and Yerevan State Conservatory lived.
Shake Zakaryan was hired in the ten-year Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School as an accompanist. At the same time, she was accepted into the seven-year Music School after Alexander Spendiaryan in the violin class of Veronica Akhsharumova. She also worked as an accompanist in the cello classes of Levon Grigoryan, and Alexander Chaushyan, and, since 1969, in the class of Zareh Sargsyan and the violin class of Tatyana Hayrapetyan.
On November 2, 1950, a big concert was held at the Armenian Philharmonic dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Music School after Alexander Spendiaryan. The following musicians participated in the concert: A. Avdalbekyan, K. Kostanyan, A. Babajanyan, G. Abadzhyan, A. Arutiunian, A. Chaushyan, as well as the choir and orchestra of the Music School after Alexander Spendiaryan. Marta Navasardyan and Shake Zakarian were the accompanists.
For many years, Shake Zakaryan was a constant participant in solo, class, and reporting concerts of the Tchaikovsky and Spendiaryan Music Schools, republican competitions, and shows. Concertmaster Zakaryan was the first, reliable, and sensitive accompanist of subsequently famous musicians in Armenia and abroad: cellists Vahram Sarajyan, Levon Muradyan, and Varuzhan Bartikyan. She accompanied cellists who took a worthy place in Armenian performing art and pedagogy: Levon Grigoryan, Tigran Adamyan, Hayk Amatuni, Eduard Gulabyan, Yuri Tatevosyan, John Gevorkyan, Vahe Hayrikyan, Rafael Nanyan, Tatevos Asoyan, David Davtyan, Narine Harutyunyan, Armine Avetisyan, Gayane Sahakyan, and others.
Since the 1960s, Shake Zakarian and cellist students from the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School participated in Transcaucasian and republican competitions and shows. As an accompanist, she took part in three Transcaucasian competitions.
In 1972, the All-Union Competition of Young Musicians was held in Riga, in which students of Alexander Chaushyan participated with accompanist Shake Zakaryan.
In 1956, in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater, Shake Zakaryan performed with an ensemble of cellists from musical educational institutions of Yerevan in the final concert of the Decade of Armenian Art and Literature («Impromptu» by Alexander Arutiunian was performed).
Noteworthy is the concert of two ensembles — violinists (led by Gurgen Gevorkyan) and cellists (led by Alexander Chaushyan), which took place on November 12, 1970, in the Small Hall of the Armenian Philharmonic (now Arno Babajanyan Concert Hall). The concert was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia. Both ensembles were accompanied by Shake Zakaryan.
In the 1950s, Shake Zakaryan was sent to Moscow to the Central Music School for an internship. It was a useful and intense period. At the leading music school in the country, she got acquainted with the organization of teaching at the primary and secondary stages of music education. Returning to Yerevan, Shake Zakaryan offered the director of the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School (composer Sergei Kesayan) to open an artistic accompaniment class. At the end of the 1950s, at the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School, a new musical discipline for piano students was started. Shake Zakaryan became there the head and the first teacher.
In 1972, Shake Zakaryan was awarded the title of Honored Teacher of Armenia.
In the family of Shake Zakaryan and her husband, Honored Artist and honored Teacher of Armenia, Professor Alexander Chaushyan, their only son Levon Chaushyan (1946-2022) continued the profession of his parents. He was a pianist, prominent composer, board secretary of the Union of Composers of Armenia, Honored Artist of Armenia, and professor who, in 1994, founded and headed a new public organization — the Armenian Musical Assembly. The daughter of Levon Chaushyan, Anahit, is a pianist, and laureate of the International Competition after Durle in Brussels. His son, Alexander Chaushian Jr., is a winner of six prestigious international competitions, and a famous cellist touring around the world. Anahit and Alexander now live in England.