Composer. Orbelyan showed a musical talent from an early age and studied at a children's music school under the Conservatory of Baku (Azerbaijan). However at just age 11 his parents were arrested as part of the Stalinist purges and he was expelled onto the streets and moved to Nagrono-Karabakh. At age fifteen, Orbelyan was invited to perform with the Armenian State Pop Orchestra and subsequently became its conductor. He was its director for thirty-six years, during which time the Orchestra rose to become one of the most accomplished of its kind. As a result, it came to represent Soviet jazz in performances in more than thirty countries in Eastern and Western Europe, the Near East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. One of the Orchestra’s highlights was its American tour in 1975, which included twenty-five concerts in major cities across the country. Orbelyan studied composition and piano under Edward Mirzoyan at Yerevan’s Komitas Conservatory, class of 1963. He achieved early recognition for his String Quartet, winning the coveted First Prize at the International Competition in Moscow, where the chairman of the Competition’s panel of judges was composer Dmitri Shostakovich. As a result, Orbelyan also received recognition from the world's leading Armenian composer, Aram Khachaturian. Next followed the premiere of Orbelyan’s First Symphony in Moscow’s famous Tchaikovsky Hall by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. For this Symphony. His ballet symphony “Immortality” was composed in 1975 and performed by the Yerevan Opera and Ballet Theater. One of Orbelyan’s later compositions was an orchestral miniature with solo piano, written in memory of George Gershwin, and was first performed by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Orbelyan’s nakesake nephew, Constantine Orbelian. Orbelyan died in San Francisco and his ashes were returned to be buried at the Komitas Pantheon near Aram Khachaturian.