Performing at Carnegie Hall...Again

First-year P&S student Aidin Ashoori is an accomplished virtuoso pianist who first showed an interest in music when he was a toddler and began studying piano at age 4. He has won local, state, and international-level piano competitions and in February performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the second time during an Alexander & Buono International Master Class Series Recital. His Carnegie Hall debut was in 2009 while he was an undergraduate at Rice University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology.

“The acoustics of the hall are impeccable,” says Mr. Ashoori. “The sound projection is astonishingly rich and crystal clear, not only to the audience but also to the people on stage. This makes it very enjoyable since there would be minimized perceptional and interpretational discrepancies between listeners and performers. I am gratefully honored to perform at such a grand location and it wouldn’t be possible without such wonderful support from faculty and students at P&S.”

At P&S he is an active performer in the P&S Club’s Musicians’ Guild. He practices regularly in the practice rooms at the Bard Hall dormitory, one of which houses the Steinway piano that is said to have belonged to Sergei Rachmaninoff.

In Mr. Ashoori’s life, music, science, and medicine have been inseparable. He started scientific exploration of music when he was a high school student, which led to publications in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of music, neurology, and psychiatry, two of which are titled “Mozart’s movements and behavior: a case of Tourette’s syndrome?” and “Movement Disorders in Musicians,” under the supervision of Baylor neurologist Joseph Jankovic. While at P&S, Mr. Ashoori has studied the molecular and behavioral links of post-traumatic stress disorder under the supervision of Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. He also has investigated the electroneurophysiology of professional musicians in collaboration with David Eagleman, a Baylor neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author, and Brian Eno, a musician and producer who has worked with artists including Coldplay, U2, and David Bowie.