Yiran Zhao

Yiran Zhao is a composer and performer living in Berlin. She is music director and composer of Oblivia, an experimental music theatre company based in Helsinki.

Her works focus on various modes of expression incorporating both musical and performative elements, lighting, visual arts and other media. With great interest in the physicality of performance, since she came to Europe she has been working extensively with the human body and other objects as compositional material.

Zhao studied composition with Guoping Jia, Caspar Johannes Walter, Erik Oña, Carola Bauckholt, and taught at the Bruckner University in Linz.

She has worked with numerous artistic groups and festivals in Europe, Asia, North and South America, including Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Recherche, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Ensemble Garage, asamisimasa, Phace, Ensemble This | Ensemble That, Pony Says, KlangLab, and many others.

She is recipient of Artist-in-Residence Munich 2024, the Musikfonds fellowship 2023, winner of NOperas! 2022, the INITIAL grant from Akademie der Künste 2021, Berlin-Basel fellowship of the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and Akademie der Künste in Atelier Mondial 2019, Berlin fellowship of Akademie der Künste 2017, among others.

Zhao’s portrait CD from WERGO – EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK was released in 2022.