A Parents’ Gift

They worked in a mill so their son could play in the orchestra. Now, he’s creating opportunities for the next generation.

By Andrew Thurston | Photo courtesy of Ed Avedisian

Banner image: Khoren and Shooshanig Avedisian survived the Armenian Genocide and immigrated to the United States, where they made a better life for their four children.

Ed Avedisian’s parents were survivors. They lived through what Armenians call Medz Yeghern, the Great Crime, more commonly known as the Armenian Genocide. Then, they immigrated to the United States—just in time for the Great Depression.

“They came here and they struggled,” says Avedisian (’59, ’61). The message to their four kids was, “Get your education; don’t do what I’m doing. You don’t have to work in a mill.”

The family didn’t have much, says Avedisian, but it did have a clarinet. The instrument belonged to Avedisian’s brother, who apparently wasn’t always thrilled about sharing it.

“I would try to make some noise out of it and get it back in the box so he wouldn’t know I was disturbing this instrument. I wouldn’t get it in there correctly.”

He soon got the hang of packing the clarinet away—and playing it. In a five-decade career, much of it as a Boston Pops and Boston Ballet woodwind mainstay, Avedisian performed concerts with superstar singers—such as sopranos Joan Sutherland and Leontyne Price—and rehearsed with master composer Igor Stravinsky.

In 2009, Avedisian retired. His clarinet stays in its box. He jokes that he’s afraid to hear what his playing would sound like now, since each day that goes by is “one day further away from what you could do.” Instead, he spends his time experiencing music in a new way—enjoying the whole piece, not just concentrating on the woodwind section—and working as a philanthropist to help improve education in his parents’ homeland, Armenia.

Avedisian inherited his musical skill from his mother, a talented singer. “She could solfège anything,” he says of his mom’s ability to work through each pitch. “She would sing a song with the words one time and then she’d sing it again with the names of the pitches.”

When everybody else told Avedisian he “was crazy to try to go into music,” his mom backed him. “She said, ‘You want to, go ahead, go do it.’”

Avedisian chose CFA as his route into music after becoming entranced with a recording of the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the radio. The clarinetist blew him away. “Who is this guy?” the teenage Avedisian asked himself. “I want to study with him.” The musician was Manuel Valerio, a professor at CFA.

At BU, Avedisian found things were “going pretty well” studying the clarinet with Valerio and decided to pursue a career as a performing musician in a symphony orchestra.

In the decades that followed, Avedisian played not just with two of Boston’s best orchestras, but with the Atlanta Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Boston Opera Company, and the Boston Lyric Opera. He also taught at CFA and made appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera.

When Luciano Pavarotti was in Boston, Avedisian would typically join the Italian’s orchestra. He remembers sitting in the woodwind section as the great opera singer blasted through his range.

“This guy was singing with reckless abandon,” says Avedisian. “Unbelievable. I said, ‘We’re hearing this in rehearsal?’ Of course, he sang that way to a certain extent on stage, too. His sound was just incredible and it captivated the audience every time.”

And if Pavarotti was going full throttle, nobody else was going to hold back.

“You become part of it and he draws you into the zone. That’s what the arts are all about. When you can be on that level, with someone like that, that is something special.”

Toward the end of his playing days, Avedisian became successful in investing, which allowed him to take up a new career: philanthropy.

The focus of his efforts has been Armenia. In the early 1980s, the Armenian State Philharmonic invited Avedisian to perform a Mozart concerto in the country. He loved the scenery and people; less so the Communist restrictions. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, he saw an opportunity to help improve the country’s education system.

Avedisian became a trustee of the American University of Armenia and later supported construction of its 10,000-square-meter Paramaz Avedisian Building in honor of his brother. The building is home to classrooms, conference rooms, and auditoriums; even an art gallery. In 2014, he opened the new Khoren and Shooshanig Avedisian School and Community Center—named for his parents—in Yerevan, Armenia. It’s free for all students, from pre-school through high school.

“We will not accept money because they don’t have the money, but we want to give them a first-class education,” says Avedisian. “There are public schools in Armenia, but unfortunately, the government isn’t paying the teachers enough and they went from a class size of 20 to 35. At our school, you can’t fit more than 22 kids in a classroom and we pay the teachers a little bit more [than the government does].”

The school is also the first building in Armenia to be Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certified. Avedisian says the decision to use sustainable power sources has had a big impact on the landlocked, largely energy-dependent country. Armenian authorities have been inspired to bring sustainable heat to 100 remote schools beyond the reach of gas lines.

With the legacy and education the school is providing, says Avedisian, the children of Yerevan are “only limited by their own talents and willingness to develop them.” It’s a fitting tribute to the parents who gave him the same opportunity.

“I need to honor them—not only them, but others like them,” says Avedisian of his philanthropy. “We didn’t have much in finance, but we had everything else: We had all the inspiration you could possibly need. If you’ve got it, use it, and develop it. You owe it to yourself and everyone who came before you.”