Kitty Xiao is an Australian composer and sound artist living in New York. Her work is inspired by the social landscape and its influence on the body through movement, language, and production. Her compositions explore performance, electronic media and synthesis, ranging from solo, small to large ensemble acoustic and electroacoustic works, and collaborations with performers, choreographers, writers, and filmmakers. In her music she investigates timbral gesture, corporeality, and reimaginings of space, often exploring relations between artificial and human structures.
Her music has been performed by Ensemble Modern, Mivos Quartet, The Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble Apex, the [Switch~ Ensemble], Australian National Academy of Music, TAK Ensemble, Dither Quartet, OSSIA New Music, line upon line percussion, Transient Canvas, Syzygy Ensemble, Elysium Dance, Brighton Fashion Week, and has appeared at Overdrive Festival, the cresc…Biennale for Contemporary Music, International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), Melbourne Festival, Adelaide Festival, Apex Festival, The ANAM Set, amongst others.
She is the recipient of the 2026 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize, the 2022 APRA Professional Development Award, 2021 Sounds Australia Export Stimulus Program, 2020 Belle S. Gitelman Award, 2019 Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize and is an Alfred Kitchin scholar. Her music has been released through Clan Analogue, Move Records, and she is represented by the Australian Music Centre.
In 2026-27 Kitty will be attending IRCAM’s Cursus de composition et d’informatique musicale in Paris. She is a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Columbia University, and has been a Teaching Assistant at the Computer Music Center. She received a Master of Music (Composition) from the Eastman School of Music, a Master of Music (Performance) from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, a Master of Teaching and a Bachelor of Music (Performance) from The University of Melbourne. Her composition mentors include George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Zosha Di Castri, Brad Garton, Seth Cluett, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Oliver Schneller, and Anthony Lyons.