Conductor, composer, pianist, and soprano Yiran Zhao is a 2025 Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and a recipient of the Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellowship at the Curtis Institute of Music. She holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Yale School of Music (Robert Shaw Prize recipient) and a Bachelor of Music in Piano and Theory & Composition from Westminster Choir College.

Published by Hinshaw Music Inc., Zhao was a national winner of the 2024 American Prize for Composition. She has held assistant conductor roles with the Civic Orchestra of New Haven and the Greater New Haven Community Chorus, in addition to serving as a church organist for the past five years. She was a conducting instructor at Yale, and she has performed as a conductor, pianist, and singer in the New Music New Haven series.

Zhao is a soprano in the Grammy®-winning Apollo’s Fire and The Crossing, and she was a VOCES8 US Scholar in 2023–24. She currently serves as staff pianist at the University of Pennsylvania.