Birthplace: Edinburgh, UK | Studied in: Manchester and London, UK | Resides in: Leeds, UK
Yuanfan Yang born in Edinburgh, discovered a piano at his friend’s house when he was six years old. He climbed onto the piano stool, started picking out notes and realized he could differentiate pitch and rhythm and, eventually, make up tunes.
Once he started lessons, he and his piano were inseparable. He loved to improvise, progressed quickly, and just knew that this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. “The piano,” he says, “is an extension of who I am.”
Yuanfan is also a committed composer, with four piano concertos to his credit (the first written when he was 17). He’s performed his compositions all over the world, and they’ve been broadcast and recorded for commercial release.
He continues to improvise at all his concerts (usually encores), responding to suggested themes and styles from the audience.
Yuanfan loves the spontaneity of live performance and that every audience, every hall, and every acoustic can render a completely different aural and emotional experience. He recently played an arrangement of Peter and the Wolf for 500 schoolchildren as part of an outreach project—a powerful reminder of how music can spark imagination and joy, especially for young audiences experiencing it live for the first time.
“I love the idea of teamwork—coming together to create something truly astonishing, something more powerful with all of us together. Whether that is in chamber music, or with an orchestra playing a piano concerto. There’s nothing quite like it.”