Zhou Yi () is a Chinese pipa player. Praised for her “breathtaking” meticulous technique and expressiveness by the Washington Post (Stephen Brookes, August 2013), New York-based pipa (Chinese lute) and qin (Chinese zither) soloist Zhou Yi (pronounced “Jo-E”) was born in Shanghai, China. At the age of five, Zhou Yi was discovered in kindergarten by a Chinese instrumentalist talent scout, Yuanlong Cao. Zhou Yi gave her first public recital at six and won first prize in the Shanghai Spring Music Festival at the age of eight. She continued training for two 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 a position in the school. 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. During her time in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she studied Shanghai-style pipa performance under pipa masters Zupei Zhang, Ya Dong, and Xuran Ye (recorded Dunhuang pipa music in 1982). Meanwhile, she learned qin as her second major with the Guangling-style qin and xiao (Chinese vertical end-blown flute) master Shuhong Dai. After graduating from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Zhou Yi 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 conducted Chinese music workshops and gave lectures at New York University, Columbia 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. As a concert soloist, Zhou Yi has travelled across Asia, North America and Europe. Some of her highlight performances and concerto repertoire 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 Song of the Pipa with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra; Zuqiang Wu's Sisters of the Grassland (the first pipa concerto) with the Ohio Youngstown Symphony Orchestra; Shih-Hui Chen's Jin (Metal) for pipa and orchestra; Tan Dun's Ghost Opera