When Hrach Bogosian was age 3 he played a tune on his toy piano he had just heard, and when he was 8 he played a solo piano debut performing his own composition, Inspiration No. 1.

When he was 11, he won the Beethoven piano competition and performed with the Miami Youth Symphony and when he was 16 years old, he made his debut in Carnegie Hall in New York playing Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Lizst and a few other composers.

He recalls practicing in Carnegie Hall and the staff working around the famous performing center hardly taking notice of him until he decided to relax and play some Billy Joel tunes. Suddenly, they stopped their dusting, mopping and sweeping, and listened and cheered.

"If only my piano teacher had been there," he now laughs remembering.

These days you can find Hrach, now 28, in the family jewelry store in downtown Miami where his mother and father have been for more than 20 years. Just one block from the Courthouse, the Bella jewelry store is as familiar to the lawyers, judges and staffs of the courts as their motion calendars.

And until they just moved doors away to a temporary smaller space, Bogosian would entertain customers with a classical piece of music on a small electronic keyboard while they waited and shopped. The fuzzy white Bogosian canine, Feffo, now blind, slowly pads around the store reminding visitors that this place is more like home than a shop.

But its not just diamonds and rubies Bogosian is interested in today, but, what else, music. He has just produced a CD titled (true) FICTION in which he performs, sings and plays his own 10 selections.

For his parents, Sarkis and Seta, who came to America in 1971 and Miami in 1978, it is a recurring theme of the strength of this country where only one’s willingness to work is his or her limitation.

As a specialist jeweler with the famous Tiffany Jewelers in New York, Sarkis quickly made his reputation as a true fine jewelry craftsman. But he and Seta, like so many, saw sunny Florida as a better place to raise a family and so Tiffany’s loss was Miami’s gain. And so, growing up in Miami, their two sons, Hrach, and his brother, Joe, now a successful lawyer/lobbyist in Washington and also his brother’s manager, the dream of America has been twice repeated.

When Hrach’s CD will be heard on radio stations (or, if you ask, in the store), perhaps a choice will have to be made — whether to stay with the jewelry business or professional music.

After his Carnegie Hall recital, he says he had reached a goal he had set and after that turned his thoughts to a career in pop music. Now with his CD in hand, a new career is beckoning for this rare young artist who writes both music and lyrics, arranges, plays and finances his efforts.

Whatever happens, the story of Hrach and Joe and Seta and Sarkis is just one more reminder of the saying: "Only in America."