Akram Hameed at the piano

Classical piano has been one of the most significant parts of my life. I began teaching myself at 15, earned a full scholarship for piano performance at Arizona State University at 19, and received classical training with the university’s piano faculty.

I grew up curious, strong in mathematics, and eager to explore what I could learn. Piano gave that appetite a deeply expressive direction: something I could study analytically and also understand emotionally.

Musical instinct and the work of technique

Music came to me naturally, especially its emotional language. I could connect with the feeling of a piece and wanted to communicate that through the instrument. Technique was the more difficult part: developing the physical control to express what I heard and understood.

There were times when I practiced six to eight hours a day. That commitment came from a serious ambition to become a concert pianist and share music around the world. The work brought imagination and precision together. I needed to listen closely, recognize what was not yet working, and return to it with attention.

Studying at ASU brought a different perspective to the independent learning that had started my musical life. Working with the piano faculty gave me a structured setting in which to develop, accept instruction, and address technical challenges alongside interpretation.

The repertoire behind these recordings

I played works by Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Johann Sebastian Bach, Nikolai Medtner, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Joseph Haydn. That included Beethoven and Haydn sonatas and Chopin études. Rachmaninoff is my favorite composer, and my emotional connection with music remains a central reason I value playing.

The recordings below are excerpts from my personal collection. They introduce three works from my classical repertoire: Brahms’s Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 2; Chopin’s Ballade No. 2; and Scriabin’s Étude, Op. 8 No. 12. Each offers a different glimpse of Akram Hameed as a pianist.

Sharing music in Sun City

I gave concerts at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Sun City, sharing music with senior citizens. Those performances connected my musical ambition with an audience in my own community. Developing the ability to play mattered to me, and so did being able to share that experience with other people.

My professional work today is in coaching, but music remains an important part of the person behind that work. It gave me an early experience of pursuing something deeply, recognizing the difference between instinct and execution, and putting sustained effort into a skill I cared about.

Read Akram Hameed’s full background → · Read reflections on music and practice →