Waleed Howrani was brought up in Beirut where he studied piano, theory, harmony and solfege privately while engaging in trials of his first opuses. At thirteen, he came to the attention of the late composer Aram Khachaturian, who arranged for him to receive scholarships to study piano at Moscow’s Central Music School and the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, and to listen to Khachaturian’s master classes in composition.
By the time he was nineteen, he had been awarded the Certificate of Honour at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition and became a Laureate at the Queen Elixabeth Competition, paving the way to concert tours in the former Soviet Union, East and West Europe, the Middle East, as well as in the Americas.

After settling in the United States in 1973, Waleed Howrani pursued his lifelong interest in creating music by studying with the late composer William Albright of the University of Michigan, and attending seminars by Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom. As a composer, he has been the recipient of a number of honours, including the Michigan Council for Arts award for his Animal Rags for piano, the Artistic Excellence award from Wayne County, MI, the Khalil Gibran Fine Arts Scholar award, and a grant from the Hariri Foundation for his Concerto for Alto Saxophone, Strings and Percussion. Waleed Howrani was a finalist in the 1990 Nissim/ASCAP Composition contest and in 2002 he won first place in the National federation of Music Clubs, Youse Adult Composers contest for Introduction and Fire Dance for Piano.