Conductor, composer, pianist, and vocalist Yiran Zhao holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music (Robert Shaw Prize) and Institute of Sacred Music (Margot Fassler Prize), and a Bachelor of Music in Piano and Theory & Composition from Westminster Choir College, summa cum laude. Zhao participated in the Orchestral Conducting Institute at the University of Oregon, where she worked with Maestro Neil Varon.

As a composer, Zhao actively receives commissions and her solo, choral and orchestral pieces have been performed frequently around the US, Europe, and Asia. As an active soprano, Yiran will be joining Apollo’s Fire, VOCES8 US Scholars, and Yale Choral Artist for the 2023-24 season.

Zhao is a post-graduate teaching fellow at the Yale Music in Schools Initiative where she teaches private lessons as well as leading instrumental and vocal ensembles, and she was a student manager and soprano in the Yale Schola Cantorum, the organist/pianist at First Baptist Church in New Haven, director of Yale Divinity School (Marquand) Chapel Choir, choir director and organist at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Kendall Park, NJ. She was one of the four conductors selected to participate in the 2022 Eastern ACDA Graduate Conducting Masterclass in Boston, Massachusetts. She was also the director of the Xiao Feng Arts Choir, the assistant conductor of the Grammy-nominated SameStream choir, and one of the faculty members for the High School Piano Camp at Westminster in 2019.