Carnegie Hall, New York
2025 Jan
About
Miko Yau is a percussionist, pianist, educator, and cultural advocate from Hong Kong whose artistic vision centers on fostering collaboration and cultural exchange through music. She holds a Master of Music in Performance from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she won the 2024 Wind Ensemble Concerto Competition and served as a Piano Accompanist. Supported by a full scholarship — HKSAR Government’s Multi-faceted Excellence Scholarship, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Translation from The University of Hong Kong. Miko now serves as a freelance musician and percussion band director in local Hong Kong schools, dedicated to performing and nurturing the next generation of musicians and inspiring young artists.
As a founding member of Mello Duo, Miko collaborates with Taiwanese cellist Tiffany to explore the intersection of Asian traditions and contemporary chamber music. In 2025, they gave a World Premiere of Prof. Hing-yan Chan’s Night music II at Carnegie Hall, New York. In summer 2025, the duo was invited by JustBook-ish Bookstore, which is a cultural hub in Dorchester, Massachusetts founded by a Black American culture advocate. Mello Duo was invited to present a recital celebrating the shared cultural heritages of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Their program featured commissioned works by professors from The University of Hong Kong and National Kaohsiung Normal University, followed by a post-recital talk on Hong Kong’s neon aesthetics and Taiwanese folk tunes.
In 2024, Mello Duo received the Lawrence Chamber Music Festival Fellowship, performing Night Music I by Professor Chan Hing-yan in Appleton, Wisconsin. Sharing Asian contemporary music in a predominantly white community, the duo engaged in meaningful post-concert conversations with audiences eager to learn about Asian culture and sound.
Miko’s artistic practice extends across genres and disciplines. She was one of the percussionists in the Toolbox Percussion Mainland China Tour 2025, collaborating with dancers and theatre artists to create interdisciplinary performance experiences. Beyond the stage, she actively engages the public through music workshops at Hong Kong arts venues such as Tai Kwun and Artistree, as well as in local schools, reflecting her belief that music is a universal language accessible to everyone.
Miko also recorded WAS/WERE, a contemporary music album, featuring seven original works by Singaporean composer Benedict Koh, performing vibraphone alongside an international ensemble of musicians.
In 2026, Miko was invited by the director of Théâtre de la Feuille to perform as a musician in the Chengdu tour of The Fates of Mountains and Rivers 山川命, a contemporary physical theatre production inspired by the ancient Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas. In the same year, Miko was selected to receive the Emerging Artists Development Grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. As part of this support, she will present a 2026 recital in Hong Kong with Mello Duo, bringing her Taiwanese duo partner to perform alongside her. Together, these projects highlight Miko’s commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration across music, theatre, technology, and visual arts, while engaging deeply with Asian cultural heritage in both local and international contexts.