He's an accomplished musician, a respected composer and a Ph.D candidate in music composition at Michigan State University.

"I listen to music with all my senses," Mazone, 25, said. "I feel the vibrations, see how people play and react to music, and I do hear some of it through my ears.

"When I play with the (Lansing) Concert Band, I'm watching everyone else around me move to the music and I am also feeling the music, like, it's a feeling you can't get from listening through headphones," he said. "I can feel the tuba and the percussion and lower instruments that resonate."

Mazone plays clarinet and bass clarinet. He received his bachelor's degree from SUNY Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York, where he worked with clarinet professor Julianne Kirk Doyle.

She recalled Mazone's visit to Crane as a high school senior to audition for admittance. He asked Doyle for a private lesson the day before his audition.

"Before we began the lesson, he said to me, 'You know, I read lips and I need to see your face so I can understand what you're saying, because I can't hear very well.'

"When Tyler came back the next day for the audition, he had changed so much. He made huge improvements," Doyle said. "Most students his age would have taken a few weeks to make his level of improvement."

Doyle was impressed.

"I told him, 'Wow, you listen more than some of my students who can hear. You listen in a different way. You're more attentive to the detail.' I remember being gobsmacked. He was so open to change."

The clarinet professor said she was fascinated by the way Mazone processed music.

"It's a different experience for him," she said. "In terms of musicality, we talked about the shape and direction of the music. He was a very intuitive musician. He was refreshing to have as a student."

Doyle commissioned Mazone to write a piece that she premiered last summer at a conference in Ireland.

"It's stunning," she said. "We both lost pets around the same time so I commissioned him to write a piece to commemorate the feelings of loss and he really put his heart into it. It's just beautiful."

Mazone had composed a handful of pieces in high school before he arrived at Crane. His interest in video games inspired some of his work.

"I played the Nintendo DS, so I was holding it in my hands and my hands were very close to the speakers so I could feel and hear the music through my hands," he said. "I began my art of composing by arranging music for video games."

Mazone also studied martial arts, which he said required a discipline similar to learning music.

Because of the gaming music influence, Mazone wants melody to play a key part of his music.

"For me, it is important to have something for the audience and players to latch onto, you know, something that they can sing when leaving the hall."

Another influence: SpongeBob SquarePants. Mazone said he chose to play the clarinet because that's what the cartoon character played.

Earlier this year, the MSU orchestra featured a new work by Mazone called "Korat," a celebration of his pet cat.

Before the performance, he shared a few words with the audience.

"It's perfect that my new piece is being premiered tonight," Mazone said. "The other two works on the program are by Shostakovich and Beethoven. Shostakovich was Russian and I was born in Russia and adopted at 13 months old. And Beethoven was deaf, and so am I."

One difference: Beethoven became deaf as he grew older. Mazone was born deaf.

"Beethoven had time to internalize music, I did not."

When he graduated from Crane, Mazone was offered scholarships to continue his education from the New England Conservatory in Boston and MSU.

Mazone said he chose MSU because of its nationally known music composition faculty: Ricardo Lorenz, David Biedenbender and Zhou Tian.

The professors didn't change their teaching methods to accommodate Mazone. He has American Sign Language interpreters who accompany him to all his classes. And Mazone also is a superb lip reader.

"Tyler is the most devoted and hardest working student I have ever had," Tian said.

Lorenz said there is nothing in Mazone's music that would suggest he's deaf.

"Tyler is a joy to have in the program and to work with," Lorenz said. "He's a very special student, colleague and peer."

Mazone first met Biedenbender at a conference where the professor encouraged the young composer to continue his studies at MSU.

When asked how Mazone is able to study, perform and compose music without normal hearing, Biedenbender said, "For Tyler, it's a full body experience. He uses sight, body language and vibration. It's amazing. People who don't pay close attention have no idea that he is deaf."

Mazone said his composing process goes beyond what sounds the instruments make.

"I'm also thinking about what the audience members, or even what the performers are going to experience with all their senses," he said.

When he's conducting, he said, "I have to hear it in my head first before I pull in the sound from the band. That takes years of training to realize a score in your head."

Tian described working with Mazone as "moving."

"His music speaks so brilliantly ...," Tian said. "He has this desire to tell the world that someone like him has music to share."

Mazone wants to share the power of music because he's keenly aware of how it can affect people.

When he was in high school, his band played "Chorale and Shaker Dance" by John Zdechlik. It was a defining experience for him.

"I really loved that piece," Mazone said. "In my senior year I went through a difficult time and it really helped me. It was because of that piece that I decided to become a composer."