Malaysian-born Tengku Irfan has appeared around the world as a conductor, pianist, and composer, and has been praised by The New York Times as “eminently cultured” and possessing “sheer incisiveness and power”. He made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the Juilliard Orchestra in April 2024. He appears as a guest conductor with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra on multiple occasions. As a conductor, he a recipient of the Robert Craft Igor Stravinsky Grant in Orchestral Conducting and the Bayreuth Stipendium Award. He also worked as assistant and cover conductor for orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of The United States, among others.

In his earlier years as a pianist, he has performed with orchestras worldwide such as Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, among others. He won the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 competition in Aspen back in 2013, and was the resident pianist for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble between 2014-2017. His compositions have also been premiered by orchestras and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, New York Virtuoso Singers, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and the MDR Sinfonieorchester. He also won three ASCAP Morton Gould Awards as a composer.

Prior to his conducting studies, he was a double major in piano and composition at The Juilliard School, whose teachers included Yoheved Kaplinsky, Robert Beaser, and Ira Taxin. He graduated with a Masters of Music in Orchestral Conducting, where he studied with David Robertson. During his years at Juilliard, he was a proud recipient of the Juilliard School Kovner Fellowship Award. Currently, he is the founder and music director of his own group, Ensemble Fantasque, promoting works from the 20th and 21st centuries, and underperformed pieces from earlier time periods.