Altin Volaj’s interest in music dates back to his years in high school, where he excelled in
composition, theory, and piano performance. Since then, Altin has attended significant music schools in Greece, France, Russia, Germany, the U.S., the U.K. and Switzerland, working with highly recognized composers such as Lukas Foss (USA), Theodore Antoniou (Greece), Lawrence Moss (USA), Allain Gaussin (France), Georges Aperghis (Greece/France), Vladimir Tarnopolsky (Russia), Michael Finnissy (U.K.), Martijn Padding (Netherlands), Lisa Lim (Australia), and more recently with Xavier Dayer (CH) and Simon Steen-Andersen (DK). 

As a composer, Altin has had global exposure by participating in workshops, music festivals, and seminars throughout Europe and America. His music has been conducted by well-known conductors, performed and commissioned internationally by music ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the Bang on a Can All-Stars Ensemble, Darmstadt Summer School New Music Ensemble, the Greek Ensemble of New Music, the Alea III New Music Ensemble, the Left Bank Quartet, the Boston University Symphony Orchestra, the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra, Maryland Opera Studio, Canadian opera director Leon Major, Scottish contemporary vocalist Frances M Lynch and German avant-garde singer/actress Frauke Aulbert, (to name a few).

In addition to his exposure as a composer, he has been very fortunate to lead education research, workshops, seminars, and courses at well-respected institutions such as Boston University (U.S.), University of Maryland, College Park (U.S.), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (U.S.), and the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (CROMPT), University of Sussex. He is currently undertaking Artistic research at Hochschule der Künste Bern (CH) and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (DE).

Altin’s music is characterized by a distinct awareness of sound, time, and space. His
compositional techniques vary from work to work, from the application of vigorous and
precise methodologies to the most spontaneous unfolding of musical ideas based on
pure intuition. Although Altin works in an essentially Western Contemporary music language, his homeland's sensibility, philosophy, and language are never far away.
The synthesis of these contrasts – East and West, traditional and experimental, simple
and complex, local, and global – gives him an enormous possibility to develop a complex
palette of his musical sounds.

Altin has been recognized as one of the most gifted and thought-provoking composers of his generation. He has won various prizes, fellowships, and scholarships, including Nadia Boulanger Prix in Composition (2005), George Solti Foundation Grant, Walsum Composition Competition Prize Winner (2005), Fontainebleau Fellowship, Robert Casadesus Fellowship, and ASCAP Awards, 2005-2014, (to name a few).