About | Joshua Kyan Aalampour

About Me

Hello, my name is Joshua Kyan Aalampour. I’m a 23-year-old self-taught classical composer of Chinese and Persian descent. I’m not a classically trained musician and my passion for music began when I was 16 years old in 2017. I originally started out of spite because a piano teacher told me I'd never be able to play after I couldn't sight read at our first lesson. I wanted to prove her wrong, so I began practicing for an average of 6 hours a day using MIDI videos on the internet. However, within about 2 weeks I had accidentally composed something and became obsessed. I no longer cared for proving that teacher wrong because I had made a new lifelong friend: music. My life has completely changed since.

I am also running a personal experiment with my art. I view life as a personal film, and my music serves as its score. Just as movies assign leitmotifs to characters and ideas, evolving them as the story unfolds, I’ve composed personal leitmotifs that represent different aspects of my life. These leitmotifs appear across my works. My compositions are deeply self-referential and are filled with easter eggs. As I grow, so will these themes, evolving throughout my lifetime until the final note is played. I hope you enjoy my art.

Rough Bio Timeline

2001 - Born in NJ, USA
8 yo - Moved to Shandong, China (parents were entrepreneurs)
15 yo - Business failed, moved to Texas to live with old family friends. We ended up getting evicted and lived out of my dad's car.
16 yo - Moved back to China. Discovered my love for composition and piano after a piano teacher told me I would never be able to play and kicked me out of her class. She emphasized not being able to read sheet music that day, so I wanted to prove her wrong by learning piano from MIDI videos on the internet. I wasn't in school at this time and practiced for about 6 hours a day. By around the second week, I had accidentally composed something. I immediately fell in love. I was so lonely growing up, but it finally felt like I had an unconditional friend now - music. Composed the original drafts of "Return to Versailles" and "Reverie" around this time.
16.5 yo - Moved back to NJ. Lived out of motels. Composed on my phone.
17-18 yo - More evictions and motels. Around this time, I wrote the raindrop waltzes (including No. 1 in B minor), "Un amour impossible", and the first drafts of my piano sonata "Chaotique". Also fell deeply in love with theoretical physics.
19 yo - Got accepted to study physics at UC Berkeley, but was denied student loans because of bad credit. I was able to get scholarships but they only covered 2 years' worth of tuition. I made it my goal then to double up my credits so I'd graduate 2 years early. Impulsively switched to a music major weeks before classes started. Started posting snippets of my compositions on TikTok and gained a following quickly. Composed works like "Unité", "Winning Move", and my 1st piano sonata "Chaotique" around this time.
20 yo - Moved to Berkeley, CA for school and was thankfully able to support myself through social media channels. Around this time, I composed "La Solitude", "Enemies to Lovers", "The Hidden Library", and the final version of "Return to Versailles". Graduated with a bachelor's in music from Berkeley. The experience as a whole was productive (I composed a lot and self-studied quite a bit!), but I didn't learn much of anything useful from the actual lectures. I tested out of most classes freshman year and was left with the upper division music classes, which were typically avant-garde focused (and thus not very useful for tonal composers like myself). It's because of this that, despite technically holding a degree in music, I still regard myself as self-taught.
21 yo - Moved to NY to pursue a master's degree from the Eastman School of Music. I was lucky enough to get scholarships, but I felt that the curriculum was too slow for a graduate-level class. Despite this, I continued attending until one of the main professors threatened me if I didn't write in an avant-garde style. For context, after spending about 30 minutes criticizing a composition assignment of mine for being too tonal, he told me that he would track down any student he did not like after graduation and look for connections he knew in that area so that he could tell them specifically not to hire them. I didn't see my career depending on an outside recommendation, but I disagreed with him on a principle basis, so I dropped out. Composed works like "The Trianon", "Arno's Waltz", "Darling", "The Forsaken Waltz", and "Winter Solace" around this time. Eventually moved to Indiana for an affordable studio space.
22 yo - 23 yo (present day) - Realized I missed the East Coast, so I relocated to NJ with my younger brother Jacob. Composed works like "Beautiful Torment", "Beloved Idyll", "The Benoni" around this time. My brother and I later visited Japan for a short vacation. We fell in love with the culture and scenery fast, so much so that I got us our visas and moved to Japan shortly after. I'm currently in Kyoto, composing music and self-studying math and physics.