Yuwen was born on February 7, 2000 in Tucson, Arizona. Eight months later his family relocated to the suburbs of Phoenix where they remained for the next seventeen years. Yuwen's earliest memory is from age 3 when he would stay up every night listening to his Barney's Favorites CD, deliberately committing the entire CD to memory. If his parents had bought him a compilation of Beethoven symphonies, he'd probably have memorized those instead, but he did the best with what he had.

Yuwen began taking piano lessons in the Western classical tradition at age 5 which is when he discovered he had perfect pitch. At age 9 he picked up the saxophone, and at age 10 the clarinet.

At age 11, Yuwen began composing prolifically, in large part because his middle school band teacher exempted him from attending class so that he could focus on writing and rehearsing his own music. He also began studying jazz and, at age 13, made his debut as a jazz bandleader at The Nash.

From ages 13 to 16, Yuwen played clarinet in the Phoenix Youth Symphony which exposed him to masterworks such as Shostakovich's 5th. He fell asleep to that symphony every night, and just like with his beloved Barney CD, he could sing along to every orchestral part by the final concert.

At age 16, Yuwen quit clarinet, piano, and high school varsity tennis to focus on jazz saxophone. His music took him all across the US and the world. He performed and studied with a long list of jazz greats including Barry Harris, Lewis Nash, Lee Konitz, Kenny Barron, and Joe Lovano. At age 17, he moved to New York City to pursue studies in jazz performance.

NYC was a testing time for Yuwen. His disillusionment with the noise of the city, coupled with a battle against chronic pain, caused him to effectively withdraw from social life. He immersed himself in the study of theory and composition, all the while losing purpose for staying in NYC.

When COVID-19 hit, Yuwen returned to Phoenix and took a two-year music hiatus, avoiding all music. Instead, he did nothing but read, which turned out to be unimaginably formative for his musical development and artistic outlook. For example, his prioritization of breadth over depth, which has certainly shaped his musical trajectory, forms a first principle, the optimality of which is given by the solution to the exploration-exploitation dilemma. This accounts for Yuwen's advocacy among young artists for the prioritization of the vertical over the horizontal — an orthogonal renaissance.

Today, Yuwen resides in the Phoenix area where he is active not only on the saxophone, but also on the clarinet, piano, and tennis court. His story has only just begun.

Alex Yuwen is available for lessons in music theory, composition, and performance. Please contact him for more information and pricing.

In the short-term, Yuwen will continue writing his book 1001 Musical Games, a collection of musical games exploring the creative cross-idiom possibilities of melody, rhythm, form, group-playing, and design patterns. His current obsessions are Carnatic singing and SuperCollider.

In the long-term, Yuwen plans to undertake a more active role as an educator and writer, in addition to composing and performing. He dreams of one day partaking in art tourism in order to deepen his understanding of the world's music and art. At the top of his list is Chennai, India followed by Cairo, Egypt.