(May 23, 2002) — When he was four years old, senior Tigran Palyan recalls misbehaving and being placed in front of the piano as a punishment. There, he played his first note. Gradually, he started repeating melodies he heard and made a hobby into a passion that he successfully pursues today. Without a single music lesson in his life, Palyan plays with immense accuracy and skill not usually found in ordinary people. Although Palyan, whose mom is a pianist, usually plays at gatherings with family and friends, his first formal performance was at Encore!, a concert celebrating Clark students’ musical talent, held May 3. Palyan said he recalled looking at the other performers, seeing their pre-show jitters and wondering why he wasn’t nervous. “After feeling nervous about not being nervous,” Palyan said he realized this was just like any other performance. “I just got up there and did what I always do,” he explained. Palyan started out playing classical music, but he says he has been incorporating elements of jazz music into his songs. He said he notices and appreciates its complexity and describes his combination of the two styles as “abstract.” This soft-spoken musical prodigy credits his mastering of fast tempo to countless repetitions. For Palyan, the urge to just sit down and play for hours on end can hit at any time, sometimes even in the middle of the night. Fellow musician senior Matt Hahn, who collaborated with Palyan at Encore!, said that the first time he heard Palyan play, it “felt like a dream.” “It took my brain a while to fathom how fast his fingers were really moving,” Hahn said. In addition to improvising well-known melodies, Palyan also writes his own tunes. He composes melodies in his head and recreates them on the piano, though unfortunately he said he sometimes doesn’t record the tunes and forgets the songs he wrote. As a part of his senior project, he composed a medley that includes Chopin’s Fantasy Impromptu and bits of his own songs, which he improvises every time he performs. Besides the piano, Palyan can play an assortment of other instruments, including the guitar, violin, accordion, flute, bass and harmonica. He has never had a lesson for any of them— he says that he just “pick[s] them up and plays.” He says the guitar is his second favorite instrument after the piano. Despite his immense musical talent, Palyan said that he doesn’t like to flaunt his abilities and wishes there were opportunities at school, such as an orchestra or band, for him to regularly perform. He said he prefers playing when he’s not forced to because “it sounds fake.” To his fans’ disappointment, you won’t find his CD for sale at Tower Records anytime soon. “You can always dream about it, but music is a difficult career to pursue,” he admitted. In addition to his musical achievements, Palyan (ranked 10th in the senior class) also excels in school. Already used to the AP class schedule, he plans to attend UC San Diego to pursue aerospace engineering. Although his ideal career is to be a scientist, Palyan says he will probably end up being a professor at a university.