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 studies at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where her composition teachers are Dr. David Conte and Jake Heggie. Recent composition projects include Houses of Eternity, commissioned by Empire City Men’s Chorus; Risen, commissioned by Newark United Methodist Church; Seal Lullaby, commissioned by San Francisco Choral Artists; Veils: A Symphonic Poem; and Three Pictures from Kīlauea for brass quintet. Her woodwind quintet, Three Hymns, was recently released on Pentatone Music’s SPACES, marking her first contract with a major record label, and City Under the Coral Sea, one of her orchestral works, was released by Blue Griffin Recording as part of The Music School of Delaware at 100: A Century of Musical Connections. Her compositions have been performed by artists including David Friend, Empire City Men’s Chorus, Attacca Quartet, Choral Chameleon, Eight Strings & a Whistle, San Francisco Choral Artists, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her trio, A Midsummer’s Daydream, was the winner of Eight Strings & a Whistle’s 2024 Composer Competition. She was San Francisco Choral Artists’ June 2025 Composer in Residence and is working on commissions for Choral Chameleon, with whom she is Composer in Residence 2027-28, and Ensemble For These Times. Her Seven Scenes was performed by the Attacca Quartet at the 2026 TUTTI New Music Festival, and she was a finalist for the 2026 NATS Art Song Composition Award.
Commended for her “compelling and daring live performance” of Bartók’s Viola Concerto (San Francisco Classical Voice), Yost was the winner of SFCM’s Low Strings Concerto Competition, and previously received awards in the Telegraph Players Chamber Competition, Temple University Music Prep Concerto Competition, Caprio Young Artists Competition, and Grand Prize Virtuoso Bonn and Salzburg Competitions. She has performed alongside artists including Stefan Jackiw, Joshua Bell, 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 and Valdres Sommersymfoni in 2019. Her viola teachers have included Dimitri Murrath, Kerri Ryan, Sheila Browne, Carol Rodland, Kirsten Docter, Esme Allen-Creighton, and Kathleen Hastings. 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. 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.
Yost served five times as principal violist of the SFCM Orchestra, and participated in 25 premiere performances at the conservatory. She is also interested in the technological side of music and, in 2023, collaborated with Pierre and Miguel Mariaca on an electroacoustic production by Kinetech Arts. Yost has performed on the soundtracks for two short films, Beyond Us and Before Us, scored by Jacques Desjardins, and may be heard on the Ulysses Arts album Evermore & Evermore: Carols from St. Mary the Virgin, released in November 2025, and on Voyages, released by BCM&D Records in December 2025.
Both as a composer and singer, Yost is deeply dedicated to choral music, and sings with San Francisco Choral Artists. In 2024, she founded the Lower Brandywine Choral Festival (LBCF), a weeklong summer choral program dedicated to building fellowship through music, while introducing music lovers to the 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, where Yost is an Artist in Residence. Since 2019, Yost 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) since 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 original music and illustrations. Her writing mentors have included Carl Nagin, JoAnn Balingit, and William L. 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, Yost maintains long-standing academic interests, particularly in languages, philosophy, 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. In 2021 and 2022, 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 $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. 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.
When not involved in the aforementioned activities, Yost enjoys reading, hiking, geeking out over cats, rolling in snow (literally) and playing at mixology.