Ara Malikian

Ara Malikian brings his violin to the Opéra Berlioz in Montpellier on 22 March 2026 for a concert faithful to his artistic trajectory. Born in Beirut into an Armenian family and long established in Spain, he has made his name as much as an interpreter as a composer, moving naturally from the classical repertoire to world music and rock. A former concertmaster of the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, he claims a curiosity without borders, nourished by Romani and Arab influences and by nods to Jimi Hendrix, Guns N’ Roses and Björk.

With Intruso, his current project, Ara Malikian upends the codes of classical music by slipping in popular melodies, rhythms from elsewhere and a very live energy. His precise, nervy playing gives each piece a singular color, sitting between academic training and stage instinct. You hear his own compositions in dialogue with personal arrangements, always in service of sound and emotion, without gratuitous effects. It’s an opportunity to discover a musician who prefers to chart his own routes rather than be confined to categories.