Zhou Yi (Chinese: 周懿; pinyin: Zhōu Yì) is a Chinese pipa player.
Zhou is from Shanghai. As a child prodigy, Zhou began studying music at the age of five and gave her first public recital at six. She trained for four years on the pipa before enrolling in the elementary school of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, one of China's premier music schools. Two pipa students, out of thousands, were selected for the position in the school. At the age of eight, she won the first prize of the Shanghai Spring Music Festival. At the age of sixteen, her music was recorded and published by New Era Sound & Video Company of Guangzhou and Nanjing Video Publishing House of China. These recordings are used for future generations of music students to study as ideal renditions of these pieces.
After graduating with a BFA in music from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Zhou moved to New York and has been heard in various venues throughout the United States. She has performed in places such as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, John Hancock Hall, Pickman Concert Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has also played at New York University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music and the Longy School of Music. Zhou has performed in The Peony Pavilion, “The Orphan of Zhao” and “Ghost Lovers” with the Lincoln Center Festival, the Asia Society’s “Wen Ji: Eighteen Songs of Nomad Flute”, and has been heard at the Shen Wei Dance Arts’ “Second Visit to the Empress”. She has performed at the Spoleto Festival, USA in 2002 and 2004, and the American Dance Festival in 2005.
As soloist, Zhou has toured Europe, Asia and North America. Her performances include Tan Dun's Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig Germany, Young People’s Concert with the New York Philharmonic, Bun-Ching Lam’s Pipa Concerto "Song of the Pipa”, “Sisters of the Grassland” with the Ohio Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and “Yellow River” in Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania. Pro Musicis’s “Snow Of June”, the solo recital of contemporary music in the Renee Weiler Concert Hall, NYC, the 2006 Alaska CrossSound Music Festival and the 2007 Bowling Green New Music & Art Festival. In spring of 2008, Zhou Yi was selected as the featured pipa-ist for the Spoleto Festival's premiere show, Monkey: Journey To The West. She collaborated with Damon Albarn (Gorillaz/Blur).
Her playing has been praised for its meticulous technique and expressiveness. She has been singled out as a young performer of notable musical talent. The Boston Globe wrote: “...She has an impressive command of the instrument and of a broad range of its classical, folk, and modern musical literatures...” and The New York Concert Review said: “...Her subtle string work made an artistic effect...”
Zhou is a co-founder of the Ba Ban Chinese Music Society of New York. She also plays the guqin, liuqin, ruan, sanxian, and piano.
Zhou currently resides in New York City.