Born in Anhui, China, Hao Zou displayed an enormous enthusiasm in music from his earliest childhood. Already competent in the piano and the erhu, he composed from the age of eight, which marks the very beginning of his composition career.

 

         His talent in music, especially in composition, further led Zou down the pursuit of musical education. In 2008, he moved to Shanghai and became acquainted with both Chinese and Western music at the Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He composed his earlier works there before leaving China at the age of 18.

 

         At 19, Zou settled in Ohio, the USA. Thereafter - in the following four years of his life - he was vigorously taught by Dr. Jesse Jones and Dr. Stephen Hartke as an undergraduate composer at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, with a distinctive scholarship. This experience enabled him to look at Chinese and Western music from a broader, newer, and cleverer perspective.

 

         Now, Zou is studying with Dr. Chen Yi and Dr. Zhou Long at the UMKC Conservatory of Music. He was admitted with a full-ride scholarship - for his talent and excellence in composition. The formal Western-oriented teaching set him on a path to reconcile what he has learned with the Chinese musical practices and fundamentals to which he has been exposed since childhood.

 

         In almost every career stage of Zou, he has been awarded by plenty of individual international competitions in the fields of piano performance and composition. Moreover, he is now actively participating in commissions.

 

         Zou aims to encapsulate, and extract the very essence from traditional Chinese music and present it in his own works. With his iconic and implicit compositional concept, he intends to forge a personal but unmistakably Chinese style and portray the profound aesthetic appeals of oriental music culture.