Yike Zhang (b. 1993, Wuhan, China) is a composer active in New York and Toronto. From an early age, she was drawn to two worlds: Western classical music and traditional Chinese Buddhist philosophical ideas like impermanence, emptiness, and meditative awareness. Her music synthesizes these influences, blending them consciously and subconsciously, while its fluidity, resonance, and attention to subtle textures reflect inspiration from impressionism and post-spectralism.

Her works have been performed across 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 Columbia University, where she premiered three site-specific works for St. Paul’s Chapel. She has served as Artist-in-Residence at Arts Letters & Numbers and has given guest lectures at the CUNY Graduate Center and South China Normal University. Her music is featured on the Society of Music Theory Podcast (SMT-POD).


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.

Zhang has recently been commissioned by White Snake Projects and by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra NextGen Composer Program for the 2026–27 season.