Joshua Chandra at the piano

Concert artist, piano instructor, music arranger, social media marketer, entrepreneur, and curious Christian are all phrases which embody the person of Joshua Chandra. He’s performed classical and jazz with seven orchestras worldwide to date—while dabbling in rag, hymns, and more as a master improviser and instructor of piano, for students of all ages and levels of experience. He is constantly on the hunt to improve and inspire the world and local communities—Joshua regularly handcrafts arrangements of music for his piano students personally, and is glad to connect musicians through his SoCal Music Gigs Facebook network.

Click for a full overview of his musical performance background.
An international performer, Joshua is a versatile maker of music on the piano, celesta, harpsichord, organ, and digital keyboards. His concertizing has taken him from local organizations in Southern California to string chamber ensembles in Jakarta, Indonesia and Perugia, Italy, as well as with a student orchestra in Dresden, Germany in various concerts and competitions. He has accompanied a ballet, multiple choirs, and numerous singers & instrumentalists, in classical, jazz, pop, and more.

Joshua holds significant awards in every single international piano competition in which he competed, including the 2nd José Iturbi International Music Competition (2009 Finalist) and 3rd Louisiana International Piano Competition (2009 Semifinalist). Joshua holds the Grand Prize to the 2010 Cal State Fullerton Music Associates Concerto/Aria Competition, which led to two sold-out concerts on May 15 & 16, 2010, with the CSUF Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Kimo Furumoto in performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1. He was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2012 video-only 1st MUSICCAS International Piano Competition, which involved more than 150 online applicants worldwide. A few months after MUSICCAS in the same year, he was the only American to advance to the semifinals of the 2012 5th Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition.

Joshua had performances televised multiple times throughout Southern California on KVCR-TV and PBS, and gave the historical premiere of Yamaha’s N3 AvantGrand hybrid digital piano for the first time in public performance in the state of Louisiana, through the Tour of Champions (a child program of the Louisiana International Piano Competition). He has received instruction through lessons with and/or master classes given by such musicians as: Sergei Babayan, Lydia Boguslavsky, Peter Frankl, Enrique Graf, Dr. Douglas Humpherys, Masahiro Kawakami, Alexander Korsantia, Dr. Carol Leone, Michael Lewin, Dr. Baruch Meir, Gabriela Montero, Graham Scott, Alexei Sokolov, Dr. Jeffrey Swann, Dr. Tamás Ungár, Arie Vardi, Ilana Vered, and Vladimir Viardo.

A native of sunny southern California, Joshua has been playing since age 4 and began long-term study of the piano at age 6 under the late Marie Estudillo. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Music in Piano Performance magna cum laude at Cal State Fullerton in 2012, where he studied on scholarship under the famed Argentine concert pianist Eduardo Delgado. While a chronic thumb injury has taken him off of the international stage, he continues to freelance as a piano instructor and arranger while he accompanies various ensembles and musicians throughout SoCal and glorifies God on the piano and organ in churches throughout the Inland Empire.