Arin Shahjahanian is a composer, pianist, and educator whose music emerges at the junction of literature, culture, and poetics. His compositional practice explores shifting constellations of sounds both tactile and permeable, blurring the distinctions between them while featuring recurrent inquiries into form, groove, and canon. Balancing immediacy with allusiveness, he also makes space to confront cultural and historical issues relating to his Armenian identity through his engagement with traditional music, dance, and poetry.

Los Angeles-born and raised, Arin came to composition on heels of intensive training as a pianist, first through pre-college studies The Colburn School with Heewon Kwon and continuing through his undergraduate degree. He has performed extensively as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and collaborative and orchestral musician. As a composer, his music has been performed by many of the world’s leading new music ensembles, including Dal Niente (Chicago), International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), Ensemble MusikFabrik (Cologne), Meitar Ensemble (Tel Aviv), loadbang (Boston), Assonance Ensemble (Yerevan), and Old Bay New Music (Baltimore), among others. Upcoming premieres include works for TAK Ensemble and the Composers Conference Fromm Fellowship Commission.

Arin earned his BM at California State University, Long Beach, double majoring in composition with Alan Shockley and piano with Valentina Gottlieb. He recently completed an MM in composition at the Peabody Institute under Oscar Bettison and served as a graduate teaching assistant in the theory department under Paula Maust. His continued development as a pianist there led him to premiere many new works by his colleagues and collaborate with instrumental students as a conservatory accompanist; he also served as an orchestral keyboardist, notably with the Peabody Symphony under Marin Alsop. After teaching theory and composition at his Long Beach alma mater, he returned to Peabody to begin a DMA with Du Yun. Additional mentors and lesson instructors have included Franck Bedrossian, Chaya Czernowin, Georg Friedrich Haas, Clara Iannotta, and Lei Liang. Arin hopes to continue professional work as a composer, performer, and educator in addition to advocating in the artistic and cultural developments of Armenians in the homeland and the diaspora. Outside of music, his interests are piqued by cats, cooking, books, and pens.