Education
Ajemian"s career in contemporary music got its impetus from her Armenian heritage. She became known as a contemporary pianist after performing the United States. premiere of Aram Khachaturian"s Piano Concerto, which she chose to play based on the fact that Khachaturian was Armenian. Ajemian studied at the Juilliard School of Music.
Career
On March 14, 1942, she gave the American premiere of Aram Khachaturian"s Piano Concerto in Doctorate flat with the Juilliard Graduate Orchestra under Albert Stoessel. She later performed the piece on a cross-country tour. Among these were John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, Henry Cowell, Ernst Krenek, Lou Harrison, and Gunther Schuller.
Cage dedicated his Sonatas and Interludes to her and she made the first recording of that piece.
These concerts were well reviewed by such critics as Lou Harrison, Virgil Thomson, and Olin Downes, and served to launch Hovhaness into the national spotlight. She died of heart valve failure at the age of 57.