updated 20 November 2023
© Deborah Lopatin

Yang Song

Chinese composer born 14 december 1985 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.

Yang Song received an undergraduate degree in musicology from the Inner Mongolia University, before enrolling in a masters in compositional theory at the Central Conservatory of Music in China. At twenty-seven years old, she began a doctorate in composition with Professor Guoping Jia, which she defended in 2018. In 2017, she studied under Johannes Schöllhorn at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and received her diploma in February 2019. From 2020 to 2021, she enrolled in the Cursus Program for Composition and Computer Music at IRCAM under the direction of Thierry De Mey.

In 2015, Yang received a grant from the China Scholarship Council and, in 2018, a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service. Her composition projects received grants from the Deutscher Musikfond’s Neustart Kultur and the Deutscher Musikrat in 2022. She was also awarded a grant from the German Ministry of Culture and Media for the Deutsches Studienzentrum 2024 in Venedig.

Her catalog brings together compositions for orchestras and chamber music ensembles, with or without electronics, and also stretches to theater and dance. Her work reflects her profound interest in timbre and texture. In creating music, her philosophy hinges upon embracing musical traditions from around the world. Yang is particularly interested in building bridges between Western and Eastern musical cultures. In her final piece for Cursus Phoenix Eye, Dragon Eye, 眼 凤眼 for cello, gesture, live video, and electronics, she subverts the standard method of playing cello. By placing the instrument horizontally in front of the performer, she recalls how one plays the guqin, a traditional Chinese instrument. She thus questions the roots of tradition, raising the possibility of a link between two traditions and syntaxes.

Yang has worked with many renowned orchestras and ensembles, such as the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Ensemble intercontemporain, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Recherche, and the Arditti Quartet, among others.

Her music has been played at Oluzayo (Germany/South Africa), IRCAM’s ManiFeste Festival (France), Festival aDevantgarde (Germany), the Tongyeong International Music Festival (South Korea), the Juilliard School’s Focus! Festival (United States), the Shanghai International Arts Festival (China), the Gaudeamus Festival (Netherlands), and the Beijing Modern Music Festival (China).

Prizes and Distinctions

  • First place in the Zhejiang Conservatory Chamber Opera Composition Competition, 2020
  • Second place in the Austrian Franz-Josef-Reinl-Foundation’s Reinl-Preis, 2019
  • Théodore-Gouvy Prize at the Saarbrücker Komponistenwerkstatt, 2019
  • Goethe Award from the Asian Composers Showcase 2018 at the Tongyeong International Music Festival, 2018
  • First place in the Singapore Ding Yi Music Company’s composition competition, 2015
  • First place in the Voice of China Composition Competition, 2014

© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2023

Sources

Site de la compositrice.

Liens internet

(liens vérifiés en novembre 2023).