Aiyana Braun is a composer and educator based in Los Angeles, California.

She has received awards, honors, and residencies from the BMI Foundation, ASCAP Foundation, American Composers Forum, Copland House, NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, NPR’s From the Top, and was featured on several episodes of PBS’s On State at Curtis, including a mini-documentary.

She was commissioned by television pioneer and political activist Norman Lear, and legendary poet Maya Angelou to write an original work for the Marian Anderson Awards. Her music has been commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (workshop led by John Adams), Berkeley Symphony (two-year residency mentored by Anna Clyne, made possible through the “Music Alive” residency from the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA), Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), New York Youth Symphony, as well as musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra (Italy), Buffalo Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Minnesota Opera Orchestra, among others. 

Currently, she is a faculty member at California State University, Fullerton, where she provides private instruction in Composition and serves as a Lecturer for courses in Orchestration, Music Theory, and Ear Training. Aiyana has taught at the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program (alongside other Teaching Artists such as Angélica Negrón and Danny Felsenfeld), the Curtis Institute of Music's “Summerfest,” and was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Southern California. She is fortunate to have attended the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, and the University of Southern California. Her primary mentors include Pulitzer Prize finalist and Grammy winner Ted Hearne, Pulitzer and Grammy winner Jennifer Higdon, and David Ludwig, the Dean of Music at The Juilliard School.

She has had lessons or masterclasses with Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, Un Suk Chin, Chen Yi, Libby Larsen, Caroline Shaw, Derek Bermel, Christopher Theofanidis, Anna Clyne, Stephen Stucky, Ian Krouse, and Augusta Read Thomas, among others.