Here’s another in our series of profiles of the resident composers taking part in this year’s Mizzou New Music Summer Festival:

A native of Sichuan, China, Zhou Juan (pictured) was raised in Kelamayi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Composition, studying with Guo Wenjing.

In 2007 she was named the first Edgar Snow Scholar from CCOM and began doctoral studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City with Zhou Long, Paul Rudy, Chen Yi and James Mobberly, ultimately earning her degree in May 2010.

In addition to winning numerous awards for her music in China, Zhou has received the Staunton Music Festival Emerging Composer Award and is a two-time winner of UMKC Chamber Composition Competition. She also has won commissions and fellowships from the Nieuw Ensemble, Kansas City Electronic Music & Arts Alliance, New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, Virginia Arts Festival, California Summer Music, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts, Chinese Education Ministry, Viacom-Sumner M. Redstone Scholarship, Bao Steel Education Award, Fu Chengxian Commemorate Scholarship Foundation and Edgar Snow Foundation.

Zhou’s music has been performed in Beijing, Hong Kong, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. You can hear samples of some of her compositions on her website. (Note: An embedded music player will start when the page loads.)

The video in the embedded window below features one of Zhou’s works performed in 2008 by ADORNO Ensemble as part of their program ScoreXchange, an online workshop for young composers. (The members of Adorno Ensemble offer follow-up comments for the composer here, providing some interesting insights into the process of developing a new composition.)