Yike Zhang, born and raised in Wuhan, China, is a composer active in New York and Toronto.From a young age, she was drawn to two different worlds: Western classical music and traditional Chinese concepts. Her music synthesizes these, organically combining elements both consciously and subconsciously, and the fluidity and resonance that define her work reflect influences from impressionism and post-spectralism.

Zhang’s compositions have been performed throughout China, Canada, and the United States, including at the Asian Classical Music Initiative Conference, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the MISE-EN Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, the University of Toronto New Music Festival, Orford Musique, the China Conservatory of Music, Wuhan Qintai Concert Hall, and at Columbia University, where she premiered three site-specific pieces written for St. Paul’s Chapel. She has served as Artist-in-Residence at Arts Letters & Numbers. She has given guest lectures at the CUNY Graduate Center and at South China Normal University. Her music is featured on SMT-POD, the Society of Music Theory Podcast.


Since early childhood, Zhang has devoted her life to music. She studied composition at the middle school affiliated with Wuhan Conservatory of Music, where she later completed her Bachelor of Music degree. She then earned a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music studied with Marjorie Merryman, and studied with Christos Hatzis for her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Toronto, where she was composer-in-residence for the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra.