Tigran Hamasyan was born July 17, 1987, in Leninakan, a city in Soviet Armenia renamed Gyumri after the 1988 earthquake that devastated it the following year. He began picking out melodies on piano at three, started formal training at six, and was studying jazz by nine. His family moved to Yerevan when he was around ten and later emigrated to the United States, settling in California when he was sixteen.

He announced himself on the international competition circuit while still a teenager: third prize at the Martial Solal International Jazz Piano Competition in Paris in 2002, first prize at both the Jazz à Juan Révélations competition and the Montreux Jazz Festival's piano competition in 2003, and, decisively, first prize at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition in 2006, at nineteen. That same year he recorded his debut album, World Passion (Nocturne), a quintet date with saxophonist Ben Wendel, drummer Ari Hoenig, bassist François Moutin and duduk player Rouben Harutyunyan that already carried the fusion of jazz vocabulary with Armenian folk material that would define his career. Red Hail followed in 2009 on Plus Loin Music, an electronic-tinged, harder-edged record with bassist Sam Minaie, drummer Nate Wood, guitarist Charles Altura and vocalist Areni Agbabian.

Verve signed him for a run of albums built around his working trio: A Fable (2011), EP №1 (2011, with drummer Jeff Ballard alongside Nate Wood and bassist Nicolas Moreaux), and Shadow Theater (2013), an ambitious large-ensemble work adding strings, celesta and Wurlitzer to the core group. That same year, 2013, he also made Jazz-Iz Christ, an electronic, prog-inflected collaboration with System of a Down's Serj Tankian on Tankian's own Serjical Strike label, released under both their names. In 2015 he moved in two directions in the same year: Mockroot, his first album for Nonesuch, and Luys i Luso, recorded for ECM with the Yerevan State Chamber Choir under producer Manfred Eicher, setting medieval Armenian sacred hymns for piano and choir. A year later, Atmosphères (2016, ECM) paired him in a spare, largely improvised session with guitarist Eivind Aarset and live sampling by Jan Bang, both members of Norway's Punkt scene.

He stayed with Nonesuch through An Ancient Observer (2017), a mostly solo-piano record, and The Call Within (2020), which added an unusual guest in Animals as Leaders guitarist Tosin Abasi alongside a children's choir from Gyumri. They Say Nothing Stays The Same (2019) is a film score. StandArt (2022) turned to the American songbook directly, a set of jazz standards recorded with saxophonists Joshua Redman and Mark Turner, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown, an unusually starry cast for a record centered on tunes rather than originals. His most recent albums for the French label Naïve, The Bird of a Thousand Voices (2024) and Manifeste (2026), are large-scale conceptual works drawing on Armenian mythology and, on Manifeste, medieval Armenian hymn texts translated and set alongside his own writing.

Hamasyan's name surfaces in the biography of Israeli saxophonist Shauli Einav, who lists him among musicians he has performed with; no recording pairing the two appears in either man's discography, so the connection is a bandstand one rather than a documented session.

Hamasyan's playing fuses jazz-piano vocabulary, the metrics and modes of Armenian folk and sacred music, progressive-rock structure, and electronic production, often within a single piece; the same catalog runs from solo acoustic piano to programmed drums and synthesizers without settling into one idiom. His technical command, in particular fast, intricate odd-meter playing derived from Armenian dance rhythms, has been widely singled out by critics, as has his willingness to move between record labels as different as ECM, Nonesuch and Verve to suit the specific project. Manfred Eicher personally produced and mixed Luys i Luso, an unusual level of direct involvement from ECM's founder that reflects the label's regard for the project.