Areg Nazaryan, who founded the Armenian rock group Vostan Hayots in 1986, died today at the age of 55.

Nazaryan, a Yerevan native, who played bass guitar for the band and wrote the group’s songs, was also a film director, having graduated from Yerevan’s Pedagogical Institute’s Faculty of Film and Photo.

A veteran of the 1990s Artsakh War, Nazaryan directed and wrote screenplays for scores of films. He wrote the Artavazd and Cleopatra rock opera.

In April of 2018, during the wave of political unrest in Armenia, Nazaryan publicly renounced the awards he had received from past Armenian governments as a sign of protest.