My latest piece āBeautiful Phantomā is out now (https://youtu.be/OM5oNt9E6uU). The full score will be free for the next 24h on my website joshuakyan.com (link in bio).
It is a short piano nocturne I composed in C Major. Some easter eggs are:
Measure 30 (56s mark):Ā an abridged variation of my leitmotif
Measures 31 - 34 (58s mark): Direct quote from my piece "Darling" (All I want is my dar-ling)
I hope you enjoy.
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THANK YOU FOR 100,000 SUBSCRIBERS!
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Life
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Guess which one is me (Hint: I had that shit on since day 1.)
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La Solitude - Joshua Kyan Aalampour
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Quick life update: I sold my NJ home and moved to Japan. I actually moved to Japan months ago and was keeping the house but it didnāt make sense leaving it vacant for so long. Iām going to use some of the proceeds to record more orchestral works this year. I was thinking of a fantasy overture to my opera āAricā, the 1st mvmt to my 1st symphony, amongst others! Iām also going to start building a new project Iāve been dreaming of for some time. I will make that public down the line.
This is bittersweet for me. I loved that home - it was like a childhood dream. But as Iāve grown, so have my goals. I bought it last year, around my 23rd birthday. That was one of the best days of my life. It was more than just a house to me; it was a symbol of how far I had come.
I was homeless at one point as a teenager, and lived in different motels after that for a while because my family kept getting evicted. But I took a chance on my art when I was 19, and it worked. I was told countless times that making a living as a musician (let alone a classical one) was impossible. That you needed a label, or connections, or daddyās money, etc. I didnāt have any of that. Just my art, and it was enough.
I still remember one interaction I had in my senior year of high school. I didnāt have any friends but I knew of another composer in the school (we were like loose acquaintances). I looked up to him. He was the only other composer I knew and was much more established. Even though I was passionate about music, I was set on becoming a physicist for financial reasons. But one day I opened up and told him how I just wanted to pursue composition. He told me bluntly that Iād never make it in the music industry since I didnāt even know how to read sheet music. I remember politely smiling, but I was destroyed on the inside. We didnāt talk much after that. Iām thankful to my younger self that I didnāt listen to him.
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This is unrelated to music, but I just finished writing my first philosophical essay, āOn the Beauty of Contradiction in Christā. The full 3-page PDF is available on my website Joshuakyan.com (link in bio). Itās based on two mirrored arcs:
-The Divine Paradox, where the Infinite bleeds in boundless mercy.
-The Potemkin Miracle, where even if the Gospels were only myth, the impact is still real.
In early 2024, I became very interested in theology and philosophy. I used to attend weekly RCIA classes at my local Catholic parish for months. I wanted to commit to the faith but felt like I didnāt have the right to call myself a proper Christian until I could answer all of my objections. At the same time, I worried that choosing atheism would pull me into total nihilism.
After months of questioning, I still found myself not ready to accept the creed, so I decided to live as an atheist for about a week. To my surprise, the emptiness I feared was quickly overshadowed by something else: the idea that even if Christianity were only a legend, it still inspired very real things! I thought about Bachās St Matthew Passion, Europeās cathedrals, Keplerās laws of planetary motion, etc. The idea of a Potemkin facade giving birth to humanityās tangible masterpieces has been stuck in my head ever since. Itās something I think about a lot in my art as well (for example, my piece āThe Lovely Abyssā, which is based on my opera āAricā, is inspired by this very same luminous contradiction!)
Lastly, I want to make clear that this essay is not meant to take sides. Rather, it is my attempt to put the tension of this paradoxical beauty into words.
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This is unrelated to music, but I created a new mathematical framework. I call it the Cross-Universe Symbolic Regression Tournament or āCU-SRTā for short. The full 20-page paper is available on my website Joshuakyan.com (link in bio).
Itās basically an alternative way to derive closed form solutions, inspired by evolutionary biology.
I originally thought of the idea while studying volatility models in quantitative finance. I didnāt like inferring implied volatility by back solving the Black-Scholes so I created this in an attempt to search for a ātrueā volatility that could be expressed as a closed-form law.Ā
This is my first real paper Iām putting out publicly. I know I have a lot to learn, and so Iād really appreciate any and all feedback/criticism! You can DM me on Instagram or email me at Music@joshuakyan.com. Also, Iām looking for an arXiv endorser as Iām not affiliated with any university. If youād be willing to help me out, Iād be grateful!
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youtube.com/playlist?list=OLA... My latest album, āWinter Solace IIā, is out now. It is the continuation of my 2022 album āWinter Solaceā. I wanted to portray the sound of hope, and so this was my attempt. The track list is below:
1.) Reverie Overture
2.) Frosted Veil
3.) The Brumal Waltz
4.) A Cradled Memory
5.) Shadowed Snowfall
6.) Winter Zephyr
7.) Gelid Mirage
8.) Snowlit Memories
9.) Beloved Remnants
The album is filled with my personal leitmotifs and Easter eggs referencing previous works of mine. Like the 1st āWinter Solaceā, itās also cyclical, meaning that the key changes lead from track 1 to track 2, track 2 to 3, and so on. I hope you enjoy.
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My New Yearās resolutions for 2025. I got most of my 2024 ones done. Iām excited to create, grow, and learn more this year!
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Hello, my name is Joshua Kyan Aalampour. Iām a 24-year-old self-taught classical composer. Iām not a classically trained musician. 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.
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, Iāve composed personal leitmotifs that represent different aspects of my life. These leitmotifs appear across my works. I hope you enjoy my art.