Aidan Vass

Aidan Vass (b. 2003) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His music has been performed by soloists and ensembles around the world, including performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Vatican.

He was a composer fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry M. Sander’s Fellowship Program from 2018-2021, where he had the honor of studying under Andrew Norman, Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff. As a fellow, he composed music for ensembles such as the American Youth Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the USC Thornton Edge ensemble, among others.

Vass studied classical composition with Brett Banducci for 6 years until 2021. He has participated in the Sunset Chamberfest’s Young Composer’s Workshop 2018, 2019 and 2020 seasons and was accepted into Curtis’ 2019 Summer Composition program as well as the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Summer 2020 program. In 2019, he was a finalist in the Young Composers Challenge and was named a 2020, 2021, & 2022 winner from the YoungArts Foundation. He was also a first place recipient of the MTAC Young Composers State Contest, a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and a winner of the American Prize (2025).

In 2019, Vass began to incorporate multi-media elements into his compositional practice, which led to the release of 2019’s Abounding Ideas, a piece for electric piano synced with a 3D animation, and 2020’s Gray Tree, a cello piece/2D animation drawn from the work of the same name by Piet Mondrian. His ambitious independent catalogue led to the release of his debut album 8 Sketches for Piano, a 30-minute work for solo piano paired with 5 interpretive music videos.

As an accomplished choral composer, Vass is published with both Santa Barbara Music Publishing and Hal Leonard. His choral music was also featured on Seraphour’s debut album and has since seen radio play all over the nation.

His music has also been featured on several online publications, such as Gramophone, The Violin Channel, Serenade Magazine, Pizzicato Magazine, Planet Hugill, and more.

Vass is also the co-founder of the music social networking platform Musotic, as well as the sole founder of the generative ambient music company Cleome.

Vass is a graduate of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and currently resides in San Fransisco, CA.

Aidan Vass (b. 2003) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. A graduate of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, his works span orchestral, chamber, choral, and solo repertoire and have been performed across the United States and Europe by leading ensembles and musicians.

Vass began composing at thirteen and at fifteen was selected as a composer fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Nancy and Barry M. Sanders Fellowship Program, a position he held from 2018 to 2021. His composition mentors have included Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Sir James MacMillan, and Sarah Gibson, as well as earlier private instruction from Brett Banducci. He received his academic training at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

His studies included acceptance into the Curtis Institute's Summer Composition Program (2019) and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (2020), as well as three seasons of the Sunset Chamberfest Young Composers Workshop. Competition honors include three consecutive wins from the YoungArts Foundation (2020, 2021, 2022), first prize in the MTAC Young Composers State Contest, a finalist citation for the ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and the American Prize (2025).

Vass has received commissions from and written works for a wide range of ensembles, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the San Gabriel Valley Symphony, the Nu Deco Ensemble, Sandbox Percussion, the USC Thornton Symphony, Quartet Aido, the USC Apollo Men's Chorus, the American Youth Symphony, and the Tallgrass Chamber Choir. He has also written for the Catholic Sacred Music Project in collaboration with the Benedict XVI Institute. Individual collaborators include harpists Alexander Boldachev and Cristina Montes Mateo, cellist Daniel Lelchuk, and soprano Nia Drummond. He is a frequent collaborator with the Los Angeles sacred vocal quartet Seraphour, whose debut album featured his music and whose radio broadcasts have carried his work to listeners nationally.

His music has been performed in concert halls and cathedrals around the world, including at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the New World Center in Miami, the Chiesa di Sant'Agnese in Agone in Rome, the Church of Saints Michele e Gaetano in Florence, the Basilica of Saint Clare in Assisi, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington, D.C.

Notable works include Eleven Branches (悼念) for orchestra, composed in memory of the victims of the 2023 Monterey Park shooting and given its world premiere at the San Gabriel Valley Symphony's inaugural concert in 2025; a String Quartet premiered by Quartet Aido; and Cello Sonata, released in September 2025 in a recording with cellist Daniel Lelchuk, with Vass performing the piano part. His debut solo piano album, 8 Sketches for Piano, a thirty-minute work he composed and recorded at eighteen, was released in 2021 alongside five interpretive music videos. As a published choral and instrumental composer, Vass appears in the catalogs of Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Hal Leonard, and Bergman Edition. His choral music has received radio play on classical stations and syndicated NPR and PBS programs across the country. His music has been covered by Gramophone, The Violin Channel, Serenade Magazine, Pizzicato Magazine, Planet Hugill, Palaver Arts Magazine, VoyageLA, and OpusLA, among other outlets.

Vass's works fall into two distinct modes: music conceived around a single musical idea, developed with complete structural commitment, and music that uses form itself to explore philosophical concepts and emotional relationships. Drawing on the harmonic language of Messiaen, the rhythmic world of Bartók, the minimalism of John Adams, and the spectralism of Scelsi, and with Gregorian chant as a foundational thread throughout, Vass also looks beyond music to architecture — particularly the formal thinking of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid — and to filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Wong Kar-Wai for their ability to unite arresting aesthetics with deeply conceived meaning. The result is a body of work that, in his own words, is always searching for ways to expand its universality.

Beyond concert music, Vass is the co-founder of Musotic, a social networking platform for musicians, and the founder of Cleome, a generative ambient music company whose platform produces continuous, non-repeating soundscapes in real time for commercial wellness and hospitality environments. Cleome has been covered by Spa Business and featured across the international wellness and hospitality trade press.

Vass currently resides in San Francisco, CA.