Tasos Stylianou comes from the town of Morphou, Cyprus. He became a refugee after the brutal Turkish invasion on Cyprus in 1974.

He moved to New York at the age of 19 where he studied music at Mannes College of Music where he received a three-year diploma in general music studies. Later he studied Jazz and Contemporary Music at the New School for Social Research where he received his BFA in jazz guitar performance. After his BFA he studied composition privately with Henry Martin and later at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College where he received his MA in Composition. He continued his composition studies by moving to Salt Lake City in order to study with Morris Rosenzweig. There he attended the University of Utah where he received his Ph.D. in Composition. He has participated in many lectures, seminars/ conferences and private sessions participating with composers such as Mario Davidovsky, Johnathan Harvey, Pierre Boulez, Paul Lanskey, Fred Lerdahl, Steven Mackie, Chen Yi and several others.

T.S. has a strong background in jazz, classical as well as traditional music, however he is mostly involved in the art of sound composition. His compositions derive from various sound experimentations that include mixtures of inventions of original structural functions and improvisational procedures that quite often express an “archaic” and ritualistic sound aesthetic.