Biography

Ritual, alchemy, and the subtle violence of transformation.

The music of Yan Liang grows out of literary and spiritual experience. Through negation, paradox, and ritual liminality, she explores ritual, mysticism, alchemical symbolism, and the thresholds where sound behaves as trace, omen, residue, or invocation.

Her ongoing cycle Nigredo takes its name from the blackening stage of medieval alchemy, in which the most important phase of transmutation is subtle and restrained.

Liang is a Montreal-based composer with an additional academic background in religious studies and ritual research. With support from her mentor Philippe Leroux, as well as scholarships and awards from McGill University, the Schulich School of Music, and other foundations, her music has been presented at concerts and festivals across Finland, France, Italy, Slovenia, the US, Canada, Germany and Austria, including Time of Music Festival, Sounds of Now, abeceda, and Tuckamore.

In 2026, her Nigredo V: Black Sun Escape was named a finalist in the 4th MusicON International Composition Competition and was performed in New York in October. Her electroacoustic work Ritual Liminality was selected for Petites Formes 2026, presented by TPMC and IRCAM, and was performed in Paris in May.

She has also worked with ensembles including Quasars Ensemble, Quatuor Mémoire, Trio Kanon, 5ilience, and Off-Topic, as well as individual artists.

Upcoming projects include works for individual artists, the Ensemble Cairn, interdisciplinary work with the Radically Relational Futures Fellowship (RRFF); and other collaborations at the impuls Academy in Graz, Austria, scheduled for February 2027.