Web: instagram.com/yangzhangmercuryorbitmusic
Most recent: Quantum Prelude: The Evolution of the Universe
Composer Yang Zhang’s debut large-scale orchestral work, “Quantum Prelude: The Evolution of the Universe,” grew out of a question about a single musical note and how it might be heard differently than expected. “It began with how we define the fundamental building blocks of music,” Zhang says. “I was fascinated by the concept of imagining how a computer divides one single pitch, not to look for greater precision but to explore uncertainty and ambiguity. My task was how to translate that, both artistically and emotionally, so people could feel the shift.”
Zhang wrote the piece in early 2026 during an artist residency at Château de La Napoule in France, bringing the ancient Greek aulos into dialogue with a full orchestra to create the Triple Shadow Effect, her own compositional technique in which one central melody splits and unfolds through several altered versions of itself at the same time. “I wanted the audience to feel emotion. Something like, this is different, but how is it different?” she says.
With a background in interdisciplinary research in developing quantum music technology, the 14th-century château brought a new perspective to her work. “As a composer, I bring my own intentions regardless of location, but the castle refreshed my perspective, because it has so much history,” she says. “Before then, I was only thinking about the future. But the castle caused me to think about the past, and how to bridge that with the present and future. The instruments I used helped me build that story.”
She paired the ancient Greek aulos and Chinese guzheng and suona with the intent of “intensifying [the listener’s] emotional response.”
Visual elements accompany the score and a companion video shot at the château, echoing an earlier project of hers exploring live coding as music. “It’s very important when explaining a sophisticated concept for a general audience to bring in that visual element,” she says.
