Yang Zhang

Composer, Enterpreneur, Educator

Yang Zhang

Composer, Enterpreneur,
Content Creator

Yang Zhang has a versatile career with decades of cross-sectional experience in music creation, music production, technology-driven social enterprise, entrepreneurship, and social innovation landscape.

As a composer and music creator in the field of music production, she has developed her distinct musical language redefined as her concept of “style blending.” Style-blending features a multi-layered musical architecture that systematically yet freely infuses various elements followed by an intuitive connection with all senses of music perception, representing the most instinctive music style with a uniquely blended music taste that resonates with the most sophisticated and sensitive emotions with a touch of futuristic music production. She is an active professional working at the frontline of the music industry and is a voting member of the Emmy Music Peer Group.

Back in 2009, as an Electronic music pioneer in China, her first album titled “The Road To Wutumeiren” featured the concept of “Asian Future Sounds” to depict a cinematic landscape by infusing subtle dance beats and sonic sound design with multi-layered Asian-oriented folk instruments and a variety of vocal styles. The whole album was immediately acclaimed by U.K. music producer Guy Sigsworth, and the EP with the same title was released by China Universal Record.

In other music fields, she has scored various TV documentaries, TV series, and commercials for CCTV after she graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music. In 2011, she signed with a New York-based music publisher Ed Steigner, and was able to work with a couple of Indie movies, including “Love Magical”. In 2016, the score she created for a transmedia project titled “The World Is A Retro” won the Best Original Music for the 2016 Montreal “View Of The World” film & music festival.

She furthered her music publishing deal with Los Angeles-based music publisher Andrew Robbins, known for his 2x Oscar-winning pictures music placements, Crash(1994) and The Shape Of Water(2018) in 2018. During his management, she developed and completed a mini version of catalogs, featuring a variety of sonic trailer music and film scoring productions that cross diverse categories.

During 2021 and 2022, along with her series of album releases, she was nominated for the 2021 Hollywood Music In Media Awards for Best Instrumental (“Recall Of The Fallen Empire”). In 2022, she won the best Sci-fi/Fantasy music genre at the 13th Hollywood Music In Media Awards (“The Lord Of The Flame),” after the success of her award-winning album titled “The Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of Flame,” for which she was awarded the Bronze Medal at 2022 Global Music Awards. In 2023, she produced the album named “The Touch of The Surging Tide”, where she teamed up with acclaimed artists from South India who have collaborated with 2x Academy Award-winning composer, AR Rahman of “Slumdog Millionaire”. The album was submitted to the 2024 Grammy Awards® in the Contemporary Instrumental category.

The project was consulted and supervised by 2x Grammy® winning composer Brent Fischer, and the featured flutist is Vijay Gopal, who is an A-grade artist of All India Radio, Chennai, and an impaneled artist on the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The Indian recording sessions were co-produced and engineered by 3x Grammy accredited musician, Devan Ekambaram.

The album won 2 Gold Medals at the 2023 Global Music Awards for Best Composer & New age. Furthermore, it won 2x Gold Medals for Best Fusion Music & Best Composer at Little Talents Awards in 2023. In 2024 Jan, the album was nominated in the category of Best New Age Electronic Music Album at New Age Notes Radio Music Awards 2024. In 2023, she signed a new manager contract with Paniro Craft, known for his multiple Grammy-winning albums, including Rihanna’s “Umbrella” in 2008 and Jay Z’s “Niggas In Paris” in 2013, and one Oscar in 1996, in association with Sister Ship Company Skull Council Music Group.

As a tech-driven startup founder and a social enterprise entrepreneur, she launched a new A.I. music startup, Mercury Orbit Music. At the beginning of 2017, she led her interdisciplinary team comprising A.I. music scientists, programmers, and Grammy-nominated musicians to participate in XPRIZE. As a result, Mercury Orbit Music was recognized as the only startup related to A.I. music among the top 30 A.I. technologies by XPRIZE in 2018. In 2019, her team was invited to demonstrate novel A.I. music technology at the A.I. For a Good summit in Geneva, organized by the United Nations, ITU, and XPRIZE. In 2020, she was selected as the 2020 TedX Talk Speaker to demonstrate her creative journey in transforming from a musician to a self-learned coder.

At the end of 2020, her startup was chosen as one of the top 11 Ed-tech startups by USC Rossier Edventures Cohort 3. In July 2021, her venture was selected by the Amazon AWS Ed-stars accelerator program. At the end of November 2021, her A.I. Music startup was chosen by Newchip accelerator, ranked as the No.1 remote accelerator for scaling pre-seed startups to Series A startups by Forbes magazine. At the beginning of 2022, her startup was rewarded by the “Hello Alice” grant program among more than 400,000 applicants. By the mid of 2022, her project titled “A.I.-enabled Music Program” was rewarded by the California Arts Council with grant programs titled “Art Education Exposure” and “Creative Youth Development.