Rough Bio Timeline

​

• 8/20/2001 - Born in Morristown, NJ, USA to a Persian father and Chinese mother. I have 2 younger brothers: Jacob (b. 2005) and Jared (b. 2008).

• 5/11/2011 (9 y.o.) - Moved to Jinan, Shandong, China because my parents wanted to start a business there. 

• 8/20/2016 (15 y.o.) - Moved from China to Frisco, Texas. My parents’ business ended up not working out, so they decided to cut their losses and start fresh in the US.

• 11/2016 - 2/2017 (15 y.o.) - My family hit financial rock bottom. The fridge started becoming empty more frequently, so we started hopping around the free sample stations at grocery stores to eat. We ended up getting evicted from our apartment and started living in my dad’s car. I was out of school. 

• 2/17/2017 (15 y.o.) - My family took out some shark loans to get us plane tickets to go back to China since we couldn’t make it in the US. My mother’s family members helped house us for some time in China.

• 10/10/2017 (16 y.o.) - I joined a free trial piano lesson to try to appease my parents. I didn’t know anything about classical music other than Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, so I told the teacher beforehand that I would like to learn how to play the 1st mvmt. She got frustrated about me not being able to sight-read and kicked me out mid-lesson so she could focus on the other kids. I was very frustrated. I had no friends, wasn’t in school, and my parents would fight nearly every day over money.  So I decided I wanted to prove her wrong by teaching myself piano using MIDI videos on the internet. I had a 100 RMB (~$16 USD) keyboard and averaged about 6 hours of practice a day on it.

• ~10/24/2017 (16 y.o.) - I accidentally composed something. It was a short melody in D minor. I didn’t know anything about music theory but immediately fell in love. I didn’t care for proving her wrong anymore. Composed “Reverie” and first drafts of “Return to Versailles” around this time.

• 3/28/2018 (16 y.o.) - Moved back to NJ, USA from China. We couldn’t afford an apartment for some time so we lived in motels. I had significant gaps in my high school years because of financial problems, so my mom forged my transcripts. To try and make it realistic she gave me a few B’s which ironically dragged my final GPA down. We got an apartment briefly but got evicted shortly after so we went back to motels. I would compose on my mom’s phone. Composed my “Chaotique Sonata”, “Raindrop Waltz No. 1 in b Minor” and “Un amour impossible” around this time.

• 3/2020 (18 y.o.) - Got accepted to study physics at UC Berkeley. I loved music composition, but was always told that I’d be a starving artist if I pursued it. The only other subject I found interesting at the time was theoretical physics. I loved string theory and initially wanted to go into research. Composed “Symphony No. 1 in G minor” and “Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor” around this time.

• 8/2020 (19 y.o.) - I impulsively changed my intended major from physics to music right before the semester started. I mentally accepted that if I went broke, at least I had tried. My parents were furious lol. I also got denied student loans, and obviously couldn’t pay in cash. But luckily was able to secure scholarships. However the scholarships only covered 2 years’ tuition, so I decided to double up my credits to graduate 2 years early. Composed “Unité” around this time.

• 2/19/2021 (19 y.o.) - I posted my first TikTok. I was playing the coda of my Chaotique sonata on an old out of tune console piano I got for free off Facebook marketplace. It went viral with 200k views. I had never experienced that much love for my art prior. It was one of the best days of my life. I started posting more videos and hit 10k followers 13 days later. 9 days after that, I hit 100k followers. Less than 6 months upon posting my first video I was at 500k followers. It was unbelievable. I was now able to make a living for myself. Composed “Winning Move”, “La Solitude”, and “Waltz of the Knells” around this time. 

• 8/23/2021 (20 y.o.) - Moved to Berkeley, CA for school. The music theory lecture content was unfortunately very underwhelming, but I did compose a lot during my time there, including “Enemies to Lovers”, “The Hidden Library” and the full version of “Return to Versailles”. I still loved physics so I also started going through Griffiths for quantum mech and Caroll for GR in my free time. Eventually graduated May of 2022.

• 8/26/2022 (21 y.o.) - Moved to New York to start grad school at the Eastman School of Music as a film scoring major. I was lucky enough to get scholarships but the content was unfortunately just as underwhelming as undergrad was. I also ended up getting into a creative disagreement with one of the main professors. After criticizing my latest assignment in a private lesson for being too tonal, he told me that whenever he disliked a student, he would find out where they ended up and call everyone he knew there to tell them not to hire that person. I didn’t see myself relying on his connections for my career, but I disagreed with him on a principle basis, so I withdrew from the program on 11/4/2022. I was there for 2 months. Composed “Arno’s Waltz”, “The Trianon”, and “Darling” (he especially hated this one lol) around this time.

• 11/2022 (21 y.o.) - Fell into a bit of depression after dropping out. I was doubting my grad school decision for a bit but eventually got back on my feet and started composing much more, including works like “Winter Solace” and “The Forsaken Waltz”. This was one of my most prolific periods. My income tripled about a month later.

• 6/20/2023 (21 y.o.) - I moved out of New York and bought my first house near the Chicago area. It ended up not being for me but I composed works like “Beautiful Torment”, “Beloved Idyll”, and “Beloved Mirage” there. 

• 8/21/2024 (23 y.o.) - Bought a second house near NYC. It was beautiful and almost 10,000 sq ft but was honestly too big. I think I just really wanted to make up for my upbringing but I ended up overcompensating. Composed “The Benoni” and “Once Adored” around this time. 

• 3/23/2025 (23 y.o.) - I saw my younger brother Jacob trade $4,000 all the way up to almost $20,000 in a few days, then lose it all almost immediately. I was fascinated. I wanted to know what he was doing (which in hindsight were VERY risky trades - 0 dte naked options play lol), so I started studying up on what an options contract was. I eventually went down a rabbit hole (Black-Scholes equation, Ito calculus, etc.) and fell in love. It felt like studying physics again when I was in undergrad but applied to financial markets. I had a lot of free time so I averaged about 7 hours of studying quantitative finance a day, using mostly YouTube videos, pirated textbook pdfs, and exams I could find on the internet. 

• 4/1/2025 (23 y.o.) - Visited Japan briefly earlier in the year and fell in love. So I got a new house in Kyoto. Continued my quantitative finance self studies. Composed “Beloved Eschaton” and “Beautiful Phantom” around this time. 

• Present (12/2025) (24 y.o.) - I continue to compose and self-study quantitative finance. Recently I’ve been focusing on larger works like my opera “Aric”. For quant stuff, I’ve been experimenting with building more. My most recent algorithms include a temporal convolutional network and a topological graph diffusion arbitrage strategy. I still have so much to learn, but the math and physics that goes on behind quant feels like art. Profit matters, of course, but I find myself more drawn to the beauty of the math behind it. It’s like a form of escapism for me, similar to music composition. I hope to continue creating :)