BIOGRAPHY

Discipline is the fence that lets the world in.

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.

Yost 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 alongside artists including Stefan Jackiw, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and members of the Telegraph, Esmé, Harlem, and Jasper Quartets. She attended Bowdoin International Music Festival 2018-23, where she studied with Dimitri Murrath, Carol Rodland, and Kirsten Docter, and Valdres Sommersymfoni in 2019, where she studied with Carol Rodland. Her chamber music coaches have included Thomas Kraines, Phillip Ying, Liz Freivogel, Tao Lin, Kathryn Votapek, Andrés Díaz, Sidney Curtiss, Charles Parker, and members the Esmé, Telegraph, and Jasper String Quartets. 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 five times as principal violist of the SFCM Orchestra. Her activities at SFCM include semesterly recitals, often featuring her own compositions, and she is deeply interested in the creative opportunities with which the new music scene is replete. Since starting her undergraduate studies, she has played in 25 premiere performances and, in 2023, collaborated with Pierre and Miguel Mariaca on an electroacoustic production by Kinetech Arts.

Yost’s 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, Eight Strings & a Whistle, and San Francisco Choral Artists. Recent composition projects include Seal Lullaby, a choral setting of Rudyard Kipling’s poem commissioned by San Francisco Choral Artists; Veils: A Symphonic Poem; Three Pictures from Kīlauea for brass quintet; Three Hymns for wind quintet; and a Nocturne for viola and harp. Her flute, viola, and cello trio, A Midsummer’s Daydream, was the winner of Eight Strings & a Whistle’s 2024 Composer Competition, and was premiered by the trio in New York City in November 2024. She was San Francisco Choral Artists’ June 2025 Composer in Residence.

In 2024, Yost founded the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival (LBCF), a weeklong summer 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’s final performances benefit the Food Bank of Delaware, for which the Festival has raised $2300 thus far.

LBCF functions under the auspices of Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church (LBPC) in Wilmington, Delaware. Since 2019, Zoe has played many roles 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, SFCM Conservatory Chorus, 2023-24, and intermittently in the Parish Choir of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin (Union Street, San Francisco) in spring 2025.

Yost 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. Yost is also a visual artist, and her paintings and photography have been featured by the Wilmington Art Loop and the Entomological Society of America.

Though largely preoccupied by musical pursuits, Zoe maintains long-standing academic interests, particularly in languages, history, and science. In 2020 and 2021, she won two Gold Medals in the National German Exam, given by the American Association of Teachers of German. 2021-22, she studied French informally. Of all the scientific disciplines, she enjoys geology, theoretical physics, and ornithology most.

Since childhood, Yost has had a passion for conservation and citizen science. Between the ages of seven and fifteen, she raised over $7500 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. Yost 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. Ticket sales for the closing performance of the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival were donated to the Food Bank of Delaware. Yost intends to continue and expand her philanthropic work as her career evolves.

For shorter versions of this biography, please visit my viola and composition pages.