Growing up in Beirut, Lebanon, Yared recalls his "only pleasure was to go to the church opposite [his home] to play the organ." That instrument, installed in 1930 in the Church of Saint-François, has exerted profound influence over the twentieth-century music of Beirut, and Yared claims to have been taught by Bertrand Robillard, a church organist who taught Lebanese composers Toufic Succar, Boghos Gelalian, and the Rahbani brothers.