About
Composer Kian Ravaei (b. 1999) takes tone painting to a new level, synthesizing diverse inspirations into evocative musical portraits. Whether he is composing a string quartet inspired by wonders of the natural world, electronic music that evokes the pulsating energy of late-night dance clubs, or a symphonic poem that draws from the Iranian music of his ancestral heritage, he takes listeners on a spellbinding tour of humanity's most deeply felt emotions.
In the 2026–27 season, Ravaei serves as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's Sound Investment Composer, presenting salons about his creative process as he composes a new orchestral work. Premieres include a Carnegie Hall-commissioned work for oboist James Austin Smith, a woodwind quintet for WindSync, and a saxophone quartet for a consortium of fourteen ensembles including the Colere Quartet.
From Carnegie Hall to the Concertgebouw, musicians such as Grammy Award winner Fleur Barron, Performance Today Classical Woman of the Year Lara Downes, and New York Philharmonic clarinetist Anthony McGill have brought Ravaei's music to global stages. The 2026 Grammy-nominated album Alike - My Mother's Dream featured Ravaei's arrangement of the Iranian protest song Morghe Sahar. His works have been commissioned by prominent chamber music organizations—among them Seattle Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Northwest—as well as the American Composers Orchestra, where he is currently a resident CoLABoratory Fellow.
Notable honors include commissioning grants from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, and the Barlow Endowment, as well as grand prizes in the New York Youth Symphony First Music Chamber Music Competition and the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. As a previous Classeek Ambassador Programme Artist and Copland House CULTIVATE Fellow, Ravaei participated in career enrichment programs alongside the world's most promising classical musicians.
Born to Iranian immigrants, Ravaei maintains close ties to the Iranian community in his hometown of Los Angeles. Many of his works combine the ornamented melodies of Iranian classical music with the colorful harmonies of Western classical music, resulting in a distinctive “meeting of cultures and musical styles” (The Violin Channel). Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Kunal Lahiry commissioned Ravaei to compose a Persian-language setting of the feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad for their U.S. tour, culminating in a sold-out Carnegie Hall recital. A passionate communicator, Ravaei wrote about his intercultural composition process for The Strad, and was a featured lecturer at the UCLA Iranian Music Lecture Series.
Just days into the COVID-19 lockdown, Ravaei began a daily ritual of playing a Bach chorale at the piano and composing an original chorale in response. What started as a way to ground himself during a period of emotional turbulence blossomed into an artistic reawakening. Over the course of one year and three hundred sixty-five chorales, Ravaei cultivated a “rich harmonic idiom” (Washington Classical Review) rooted in a centuries-long tradition.
As part of his residencies at chamber music festivals across the Western hemisphere, Ravaei engages with local audiences through educational presentations, musical performances, and community events. He was a resident composer at Chamber Music Northwest through their Protégé Project, and later became the inaugural composer-in-residence at Sunkiss'd Mozart. Currently, Ravaei serves as composer-in-residence of the Tenby International Music Festival in Wales, encouraging musical dialogue between the United States and United Kingdom.
Millions of classical radio listeners have heard Ravaei's music on the airwaves, from New York's WQXR to Los Angeles's KUSC. As part of Classical California's Ultimate Playlist, the nation's largest public radio listenership ranked Ravaei's Latif among their top thirty favorite pieces. His music has been featured on award-winning public radio programs such as APM's Performance Today and WNYC's New Sounds, as well as his personally curated streaming station for Classical Music Indy.
With nearly a dozen commercial recordings, Ravaei has earned critical acclaim from outlets including Gramophone, Bandcamp Daily, and I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. His compositions appear on albums such as Lara Downes' This Land—a poignant reflection on American identity—and Tallā Rouge's genre-bending debut Shapes in Collective Space. Fans of electronic dance music will hear Ravaei's orchestration in the official orchestral arrangement of Wooli & Codeko's “Crazy (feat. Casey Cook),” which has garnered over two hundred thousand views across streaming platforms.
Choreographers have tapped into Ravaei's music as a source of inspiration, transforming his vivid sound worlds into dance. They include Marla Phelan, whose innovative fusion of dance and video projections set to Ravaei's immersive electronic score premiered at the Juilliard Future Stages Festival, and Carly Topazio, who captivated audiences with her choreography to Ravaei's Family Photos during a joint performance by Art of Elan and The Rosin Box Project. Most recently, Ravaei and choreographer Annie Kahane created The Four Seasons of Hamadan, a large-scale work for violin and dancer that intertwines Persian and Jewish traditions.
Inspired by the generosity of his own teachers—celebrated composers such as Valerie Coleman, John Corigliano, and Richard Danielpour—Ravaei pays forward his musical training by empowering others to embrace their creativity. He recently launched the Tenby International Music Festival Composer Fellowship, a tuition-free program for early-career composers from around the world to gain exposure through performance and recording opportunities. In previous years, Ravaei taught composition to historically underserved students as a Composer Teaching Artist Fellow for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and also held a teaching position at the Indiana University Jacobs Composition Academy, where he mentored composers of all ages.
Ravaei started his education at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, followed by studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and he is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School.