Kitty Xiao is a composer and musician from Naarm/Melbourne based in New York. Her work is concerned with questions that arise from the body, the experience it carries, and its role in social change. Her music explores orality, movement and technology through an assemblage of instrumental gestures, sampling, custom-designed synthesisers, and collaboration.
Her music has been performed by Ensemble Modern, Mivos Quartet, Dither Quartet, The Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble Apex, Australian National Academy of Music, Switch~ Ensemble, OSSIA New Music, line upon line percussion, Transient Canvas, Syzygy Ensemble, Elysium Dance, Brighton Fashion Week, among others. Her music has been released through Move Records (Novum, 2017), Clan Analogue (Coordinate, 2017), and she was Artistic Director of the Six Piano Project in 2017. She has collaborated with artists including: Piaera Lauritz (dance), Nina Guo (voice), Hamish Jamieson (cello), David Aguila (trumpet), Brian Dooley (electric guitar), Hamish Gould (countertenor), Campbell Drummond (electronic artist), Adam Jamsek (film), Pip Elysium (dance), and Sarina Poppy (fashion).
Xiao is currently a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Columbia University. Her research investigates timbral gesture, technologised orality, and the intersection of noise, opera and dance music. She is a Student Artist-In-Residence at The Movement Lab, where she will be developing a work in collaboration with dance artist Carl Shaman Pinard. Her composition mentors include Zosha Di Castri, Georg Friedrich Haas, Brad Garton, George Lewis, Seth Cluett, David Liptak, Robert Morris and Anthony Lyons.
She is represented by the Australian Music Centre, and is recipient of the 2022 APRA Professional Development Award (AU), 2021 Sounds Australia Export Stimulus Program (AU), 2020 Belle S. Gitelman Award (US), 2019 Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize (US) and is an Alfred Kitchin scholar (UK). She holds a Master of Music (Composition) from the Eastman School of Music, Master of Music (Performance) from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Master of Teaching and Bachelor of Music from the University of Melbourne, and attended Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School.