Composer, writer, flutist, and pianist Jenny Xiong seeks beauty in the ephemeral. Captivated by the relationship between sound and silence, bloom and decay, color and space, death and memory, Jenny creates art to explore the evanescence of life and the four seasons. She is currently on a Berkeley Fellowship pursuing a PhD in music with a concentration in composition at UC Berkeley, where she studies with Ken Ueno, Carmine-Emanuele Cella, Myra Melford and Edmund Campion. Additionally, Jenny takes lessons with flutist Stacey Pelinka and plays flute in the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.

A native of Bothell, Washington, Jenny has been playing the piano since she was five years old and the flute since she was ten. She received a bachelor’s of arts degree from Stanford University with a Distinction in Music with Honors; a concentration in composition and in English with Honors; and an emphasis in Creative Writing. At Stanford she studied composition with François Rose and Erik Ulman, flute with Alexandra Hawley, and piano with Laura Dahl.

In addition to playing flute in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford Summer Symphony, Jenny won Stanford’s 2024 Marie Louise Rosenberg Honors Award for Outstanding Honors Thesis Writing, the 2023 Friends of Music Undergraduate Composition Award, the 2023 Concerto Competition, and the 2021 and 2022 Humanities and Sciences Undergraduate Prize in Music. Jenny has also conducted research on traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Ainu instruments as a recipient of UC Berkeley’s 2025 Mikumo Student Support Fund for Research in Japan and Stanford’s 2022–23 Major Grant and 2021–22 Chappell Lougee Scholarship. Her compositions have been premiered in Seattle, Boston, Stanford, Kyoto, Vienna and Berkeley.