We are so excited to introduce you to Zoe Yost, our 2024 8SW Composer Competition winner.
Zoe’s A Midsummer’s Daydream has been so much fun to learn and rehearse. It’s a whimsical work, wonderfully crafted, with a unique voice. We are very much looking forward to sharing it with our audiences and making it a staple of our repertoire.
I always enjoy researching and putting questions together for our Featured Composer interviews, and learning more about Zoe was no exception. I was particularly delighted by how moving and inspiring I found her work, as a whole, to be. Zoe is currently an undergraduate student at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, already getting well recognized for her work as a composer. Wise beyond her years, this young woman not only has so much to say musically, but her perspective on life and being an artist is something we can all learn from.
We will be premiering A Midsummer’s Daydream at the Tenri Cultural Institute on Friday, November 22. Be sure to reserve your tickets here soon!
I hope you all enjoy getting to know Zoe a bit as much as I have! I, for one, cannot wait to meet her in person!
Suzanne
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SG: How did you become interested in composing?
Zoe Yost: I was exposed to various kinds of music—film scores, Scottish bagpipes, Gregorian chant, Mozart, progressive rock—from the cradle, and I naturally began to output my own music around age eight. I did not realize what I was doing; it did not occur to me that I was a “composer” until my teens. Music just kept invading my weekends, causing me to spend eight-hour days on Musescore instead of doing assignments. Eventually I caught on.
SG: Who are your composer heroes and why?
ZY: Two of my earliest influential composers were John Williams and John Powell, and they retain their stature to this day due to the emotional depth and thematic richness of their film scores. Joe Hisaishi is a more recent favorite, for similar reasons. I owe much of my harmonic language to Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, and Hindemith (viola influence there). The passion of Tchaikovsky enthralls me; the numinous aura of Rachmaninoff’s music, particularly his first and second piano concertos, stirs me. The hero of my choral composing (and conducting) life is Dan Forrest; if I can learn to write music as beautiful, nourishing, and redeeming as his, my highest artistic aspiration will be fulfilled.
SG: Do you consider yourself more of a composer than a violist, or the other way around? And how does one influence the other? What are the advantages and disadvantages of focussing on both as an undergraduate student?
ZY: I consider myself equally both, though one frequently gives way to the other as I work on projects. The disciplines fertilize each other, with aspects of the learning process, such as score study, conveniently overlapping. Being a violist exposes me to new repertoire from which I learn as a composer, as well as keeping me in touch with the needs of performing musicians and allowing me to (again, conveniently) perform my own works. Being a composer changes the way I conceptualize music as a performer, galvanizing a broader understanding of pieces than I would otherwise attain while focused on a single part. It also exposes me to composers and styles I would not normally encounter as a violist, which can bring to light fresh viola music in unexpected places.
SG: What about conducting ? How does it influence your work as a composer?
ZY: Conducting is a recent addition for me, however it is already exerting influence both on my composition and performance. In preparation for the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival, which I conducted this past August, I studied scores in greater detail than I typically do, and experienced up close the details of many choral works, including Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus and Randall Thompson’s Frostiana. This, of course, benefitted my compositional technique.
Conducting is an even greater influence on my viola playing, however. After years of hearing posture tips (keep your viola up, open your chest, don’t let your shoulders collapse), I finally learned how stable, healthy posture felt by thinking, “Stand like you are conducting.” I believe in learning through many avenues, as each improves understanding of the others, and this experience reinforced that belief. We spend so many hours in a practice room, focused on one skill, yet aspects of that skill are often more eloquently informed by experience in a different discipline. Breadth of study, as well as depth, I find essential.
SG: You are interested and active in so many things, both in and outside of music.
In addition to playing the viola, composing and conducting, you are also a published poet, an artist, a photographer, and a writer. You are interested in nature and conservation. Did I leave anything out? How do you balance it/manage your time?
ZY: With difficulty! The frustration is real, as I am never able to maintain all of my interests to my satisfaction. The key is in allowing them to move in and out of attention, like dancers in a scene. My interests do cross-pollinate, however, especially music, creative writing, and visual art. Patiently handled, they integrate well, and my most significant projects involve two or more disciplines. Creative writing and composition are the most frequent partners.
SG: I have really enjoyed listening to some of your pieces on YouTube. I was particularly struck by your (26 minute!!) string quartet, Seven Scenes, as well as your setting of William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. Not only so beautifully crafted but also profoundly expressive. And the piano scoring of The Lamb is so satisfying. I find it remarkable that you have so much to say already. What inspired these works and how would you describe your musical language?
ZY: First off, thank you so much for your kind words! I am so glad you found my pieces meaningful and musically rewarding.
Seven Scenes began as “absolute” music, but by the time I finished the first movement I knew the programmatic arc. As you may have inferred from the titles, the movements portray scenes common in some form to most human lives. The concluding movement is an exception, portraying an experience, an integration, a consummation rather than a particular happening.
This may sound a bit anticlimactic, but I chose the text for Spring and All because it was the assigned text for the 2020 Make Music Day Young Composers Contest. My composition mentor at the time sent me the prompt a week before the deadline, I debated overnight about whether to enter, then jumped in headfirst. It was my first vocal piece, for SATB quartet. I later expanded it for a full chorus, and revised it several times before its live premiere by the Choral Chameleon Ensemble.
The Lamb was commissioned by Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church in honor of Dr. Donna Beech, their Music Director for 36 years and my first official composition mentor. I chose William Blake for his poetic lyricism, and The Lamb specifically for its wondrous, reverent atmosphere. I felt it suited Donna’s character, and also that of Lower Brandywine.
My musical language varies depending on expressive valence and psychological complexity; for instance, compare The Lamb to O Me! O Life! or the Lament for Two Violas. As you may have noticed in Seven Scenes, I often find my compositional voice at the crossroads, contrasting sounds ancient and contemporary, tonal and atonal, traditional and experimental. I seek to mingle vocabularies often kept apart, such as lush tonality and adventurous modality, and melodic writing and extended techniques, in the service of fresh and surprising combinations. My musical language is like a box of Legos, which I sometimes assemble according to the instructions and sometimes not.
SG: As far as I know, you are the first 8SW Composer Competition winner to have also composed for voice. Tell us more about that and how putting texts to music works for you.
ZY: Writing for voice encourages lyricism and long phrases in my instrumental music, though I of course still use instrumental techniques, such as the fast leaps and runs in Daydream. I aspire to balance the deliberateness and expressivity of lyric melody and the excitement and glinting color of instrumental virtuosity in my music.
I love setting text because you must read deeply into that work of writing—more deeply than we usually make time for. A strong and nuanced text will offer its large-scale dramatic arc to the composer, while leaving details of inflection and subtext up to the composer. Text settings are revealing of poet and composer alike, bringing to the surface subconscious interpretations and intentions. I compose soundtracks for my novels, and the same occurs then: by painting the characters in sound, I learn about them in ways I could not by writing. I am still learning from character themes I wrote years ago.
SG: Just to pivot for a moment, I am curious about your novels and their soundtracks. Would you please tell us more?
ZY: I would love to tell you more! My novels are the natural outgrowth of a wild imagination, sanctioned in its adventures by trusting and respectful parents. I began experiencing stories and music together around age three, and started creating little storybooks shortly thereafter. A decade into my adventures, the story I am currently writing began to evolve, and it now spans eleven planned novels. The first, entitled Stargazer, I have nearly completed; the second is about 20% written. The soundtrack for the first novel will comprise a large Symphonic Suite, illustrating particular scenes and the psyches of characters. Part of it is composed; part of it is sketched; part of it is yet to be imagined. The Stargazer series is the largest project I have ever undertaken, and likely the largest I ever will. To read an excerpt from the first book, please click here!
SG: What about A Midsummer’s Daydream? Can you describe your process and how this particular trio came into being?
ZY: The opening melody and its accompaniment figure intruded on my attempts to sleep one night, and I scribbled them on my bedside notepad. The rest of the piece grew from that kernel, with no programmatic intent. The title was a late addition, inspired by the piece’s fanciful mood. Unlike most of my instrumental works, Daydream leaves the storyline up to the imagination of the listener.
SG: Are there any upcoming commissions/projects you can tell us about?
ZY: Indeed! I am one of San Francisco Choral Artists’ 2024-2025 Composers in Residence, and have been commissioned to write a new choral piece for their June 2025 concerts. Besides that, I am currently working on a cycle of William Blake songs (of which The Lamb was the first), a new string quartet, a suite for prepared piano, and a suite for organ.
SG: What advice do you have for high school students interested in studying music seriously in college?
ZY: Pursue your known musical interests with conviction, but do not make a hasty assumption regarding the exact path your career should take. Remain faithful to your chosen study, but also try subjects with which you are unfamiliar; dabble in things which intrigue you. I am taking a class on viola da gamba this year for that reason. If you decide on your path with such firmness that you exclude possibility, you risk never discovering new passions, which you will then never weave into your creative tapestry. Every unknown is a corner; peek around the corner. If someone had told me in August 2023 that I would conduct a choral concert the following year, I would have given them, at best, a blank stare. But, I peeked around the corner, liked what I saw, and began a journey which would eventually become the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival. Do not fear the corner! Whether or not you like and pursue what you find around it, you will be richer and better informed for the encounter.
SG: In your bio you state that you believe in the “power and responsibility of artists to enrich and care for society,” and that you frequently place your “craft at the service of her community.” Is there anything you would like to add to your thoughts on the role of the arts and new music in today’s world?
ZY: The arts have a different power than machinery, money, and tyranny. Art — be it music, film, painting, poetry, fiction, fashion, or dance — shapes thought patterns toward or away from benevolence. To be an artist is a responsibility; we must be mindful of the desires and intentions behind our work, and whether their progeny are consistent with the world in which we wish to live. For, in the moments when our art is experienced, we do create that world in the minds and hearts of our audience, and they carry a little of it away with them. Most of what we give our audience soon fades from memory. But, if my music remains with even one person at a concert, I want its effect to be a life-giving one.
As we have a responsibility to create art that reveals the world we wish to see, we are also responsible for embodying that world. Our art states our ethics — often revealing those ethics to the artist in the process — and our behavior confirms or refutes them. Opportunities abound to put our artistry to healing work: for the benefit of the hungry and homeless, for the comfort of the ill, for the enrichment of those starved for education, for the healing of communities splintered by political animosity.
As history has proven, the power of art is not limitless. Art can be and has been devoured by autocracy, and perverted by the intrigues of war. Before the terror, and after it, is when the voice of art may be most potently heard, and when its redemptive power is at its highest. Our duty as creators is to speak and act now for a generous, merciful, humble, and patient world, and to oppose a territorial, resentful, arrogant, and rash one. To speak, to act, to sing a song of grace, while we still can.
SG: What is your view of music being composed in our lifetime?
If I could choose any time in history in which to be a composer, I would choose now. The possibilities open to today’s composers are effectively limitless, and glass ceilings are shattering at every turn. Burgeoning freedom brings burgeoning responsibility as we choose, among thousands of potential paths, where we will leave our footsteps. But, I would never choose a less challenging time in which to be an artist. We stand rooted in the legacy of thousands of years of worldwide creativity, able to witness and wonder at it all like never before. Our possibility for growth is unprecedented, and it is my hope that, by learning alertly from that legacy and from each other in the present, we may realize our greatest beneficent potential at this momentous and precarious juncture in history.
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A gritty, imaginative wayfinder, Zoe Yost centers her artistic life at the crossroads. Her voice springs from the integration of performance, composition, and creative writing, as well as painting and photography, and she finds inspiration everywhere from the Schoodic Peninsula to New York City. A social and environmental activist, she believes in the power and responsibility of artists to enrich and care for society, and frequently places her craft at the service of her community. Zoe is currently earning bachelor’s degrees in viola and composition at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studies with Dimitri Murrath and Dr. David Conte. Her past viola teachers include Kerri Ryan, Sheila Browne, Esme Allen-Creighton, and Kathleen Hastings. In February 2024, she was the winner of SFCM’s Low Strings Concerto Competition, and previously received awards in the Telegraph Players Chamber Competition, the Temple University Music Prep Concerto Competition, the Caprio Young Artists Competition, and the Grand Prize Virtuoso Bonn and Salzburg Competitions. She has performed chamber music alongside artists including Melissa White, the Telegraph String Quartet, and the Jasper String Quartet. She attended Bowdoin International Music Festival 2018-23, where she studied privately with Dimitri Murrath, Carol Rodland, and Kirsten Docter, and studied chamber music with Phillip Ying, Liz Freivogel, and Tao Lin. She served as principal violist of Temple University Music Prep’s Youth Chamber Orchestra 2017-22, and held a scholarship position in Settlement Music School’s Trowbridge Advanced Study String Quartet 2017-18 and 2020-22.
Since arriving at SFCM in Fall 2022, she has served four times as principal violist of the SFCM Orchestra. Her activities as a violist at SFCM include semesterly recitals, often including her compositions, and she frequently participates in recording and sampling sessions led by SFCM majors in Technology and Applied Composition. In 2023, she collaborated with Pierre and Miguel Mariaca on an electroacoustic production by Kinetech Arts.
Zoe is deeply committed to new music, and performed fifteen works by living composers in the 2023-24 season, in addition to four of her own. Her recent composition projects include Veils: A Symphonic Poem; a choral setting of Walt Whitman’s O Me! O Life!; a viola ensemble work for the 2024 Murrath studio recital; a Pastorale for flute, viola, and piano; a choral setting of O salutaris Hostia; and an art song setting of William Blake’s The Lamb, commissioned by Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church. Her music has been premiered, often with her on viola, by artists including David Friend, members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Genevieve Hahn, Choral Chameleon Ensemble, and San Francisco Choral Artists. She is one of San Francisco Choral Artists’ 2025 Composers in Residence, and is currently writing a new work for their June 2025 concert series.
In August 2024, Zoe conducted the inaugural Lower Brandywine Choral Festival (LBCF), a weeklong community choral program dedicated to building fellowship through music, while introducing music lovers to the vast choral repertoire and bringing choral music to those who have few opportunities to sing. LBCF functions under the auspices of Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church (LBPC) in Wilmington, DE. Since 2019, Zoe has been an active participant in LBPC’s Senior Choir, as a conductor, a salaried alto, a soprano and alto soloist, and a collaborative pianist. She also sang alto in University of Delaware’s Schola Cantorum, 2018-20, and SFCM Conservatory Chorus, 2023-24.
Zoe is a published poet in Delaware Libraries’s IMAZINE and in anthologies by the Live Poets Society of New Jersey. In 2020 and 2021, she received two Silver Keys in poetry from the Scholastic Writing Awards. She is writing a series of novels, entitled Stargazer, accompanied by an original musical score and, in the future, original illustrations. Her writing mentors have included Carl Nagin, JoAnn Balingit, and William Hahn. Zoe is also a visual artist, and her paintings and photography have been featured by the Wilmington Art Loop and the Entomological Society of America.
Since childhood, Zoe has had a passion for conservation and citizen science. Between the ages of seven and fifteen, she raised over $7,500 for the Delaware Bird-A-Thon, a project dedicated to purchasing and protecting fragile bird habitat along the Delaware Bayshore. As a dedicated birdwatcher, she gave presentations on owls and hummingbirds for the Delmarva Ornithological Society and Delaware Valley Ornithological Club in 2014, 2015, and 2016. She was also a bird banding assistant to Dr. Ian Stewart of the Delaware Nature Society 2017-19, and became a Delaware Nature Society Certified Naturalist in 2015.
Her dedication to community service also manifests itself through music. Zoe has performed as a volunteer and for fundraisers in many settings, including retirement homes, hospitals, schools, churches, and farmers’ markets. In February 2024, she and two SFCM colleagues, violinist Hannah Schafer and pianist Cesonia da Rosa, co-directed a benefit concert for Compass Family Services, an organization which aids homeless families in San Francisco. Two months later, she assisted her viola professor, Dimitri Murrath, in presenting a Music For Food benefit concert. The closing performance of the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival raised over $800 for the Food Bank of Delaware. Zoe intends to expand her philanthropic work as her career evolves.
For more information, please visit Zoe’s website at https://www.zoeyostvcw.com/
Photo credit: Michele Stapleton
