Yangfan Xu (b. 1998) holds a deep passion and love for cats. Whenever she hears a string player glissando in the upper registers, she can’t help but think of a cat's meow. In addition to her feline obsession, Xu is a Chinese-born US-based composer who comes from a musical family in Lanzhou, Gansu province, with a spoiled cat who eats better than everyone else. Xu was awarded the 1st Prize of the 2020 Hausmann Quartet Quarantine Composition Competition. She is the winner of the Society for New Music's 2021 Israel/Pellman Award. She won the 2021 New Juilliard Ensemble (NJE) Composition Competition, and her commissioned work Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas premiered at
the Lincoln Center in a concert by NJE in 2022. Her music has been enjoyed by audiences in cities such as New York, San Francisco, San Diego, and Paris. Her compositions have been performed by professional groups such as Friction Quartet, Choral Chameleon, Keyed Kontraptions and Ravel Virtual Studios. Her music will be performed by the Sydney Contemporary Orchestra in Australia in 2023. Xu has worked with composers including Phillip Lasser, Xiaofu Zhang, Ping Jin, and Michel Merlet. Xu studied musicology at the high school affiliated with the Central Conservatory of Music in China. She began her compositional study with Changyuan Liu in 2014. She received a bachelor’s degree in composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying with Mason Bates. Xu earned her master’s degree in composition at the Juilliard School, studying under Robert Beaser. She is a current DMA student at the New England Conservatory of Music with studio teacher Kati Agócs.