Sarana Chou is a composer/pianist based in Pittsburgh area. Her music is known for its distinct expressiveness and intense musical language. The New York Times described Sarana’s music as “modern and thorny”; The Birmingham News praised her as “a composer with a convincing point of view and the facility to get her ideas across.” As the first prize winner (Leo Kaplan Award) at the 2002 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, Sarana Chou has been awarded numerous composition prizes. She was named 2012 winner of Alabama Music Teachers Association State Commission Award, and 2nd International Call for Duet at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China. She was also winner of the Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize from International Alliance for Women in Music, and the USA Florida Chapter of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) competition.

Sarana Chou has been invited as composer-in-residence at The Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, where she presented a concert of her music, and gave lecture on music and creativity process to audience. She has also been invited as featured young composer by Foundation for Chinese Performingin a concert and seminar series, New Music from China, held in Harvard University and Longy School of Music.


Sarana Chou studied composition under Samuel Adler, Shulamit Ran, Robert Morris, and David Liptak at The Juilliard School (B.M. ’02), the University of Chicago (M.A. ‘04), and Eastman School of Music (D.M.A. ’09), respectively. From 2008-2013, she was Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Music at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. She also served on faculty at West Virginia University School of Music and at the preparatory school of Carnegie Mellon University. She has been an official rater/reader of the AP Music Theory Exams by College Board, and currently teaches composition, music theory, and piano privately.