Lyana Ulikhanyan, born in 2010 in Yerevan, is an emerging young cellist whose musical journey began at the age of four. A student at the Tchaikovsky Music School in Yerevan, Lyana paralelly takes lessons from renowned professor Denis Severin (Switzerland).
In 2018, Lyana won the Grand Prize of the Armenian General Benevolent Union’s (AGBU) Competition, where she was granted her first cello. A year later, in 2019, her talent gained wider recognition when she was invited to perform on the Russian National TV show “Better Than All.” That same year, she was awarded First Prize in “The Muse” online competition, which led to an invitation to perform at the prestigious Megaro Concert Hall in Athens.
Since then, Lyana has represented Armenia in over thirty international competitions, earning top prizes and accolades across Europe and Asia. Among her most notable achievements is the 2025 First Prize at the Davidov International Cello Competition, where she was also awarded for the Best Interpretation of Davidov’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with the Latvian State Orchestra. In recent years, she has also taken top honors at international competitions in Slovakia, Austria, Romania, Switzerland, China, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to competitions, Lyana has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Symphonique de Genève, Sinfonietta Riga, the Athens Symphony Orchestra, and the Russian Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with leading conductors and continues to gain stage experience with orchestras across Europe.
Lyana has taken classes in various cello academies in the world: Rutesheim Cello Academy (Germany), Tibor Varga Academy (Switzerland), and the Académie Internationale d’Été de Nice (France). She has studied with many leading pedagogues including Wen-Sinn Yang, Danjulo Ishizaka, Marc Coppey, and Valentin Radutiu.
L.Ulikhanyan has also participated in masterclasses and workshops with some of the world’s most prominent cellists, including Misha Maisky, Brannon Cho, Melissa Phelps, Claudio Bohorquez, Gustav Rivinius, Alexander Chaushian, Rafael Rosenfeld, and Gabriel Schwabe, among many others.
In 2025, Lyana released her newest music video titled “Chem Krna” (“I Cannot”), composed by Martin Ulikhanyan. This original composition for solo cello, based on an Armenian folk melody, merges ancient Armenian themes with contemporary techniques.
