was born in a musical family and began learning music as a child with his father and mother. He later studied composition with Zhao Xiaosheng at the Shanghai Conservatoire in 1986–91, and obtained a PhD in composition in 2004. He also studied as a visiting scholar at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Hungary from 1999–2000. He is now a professor and Dean of the Department of Composition at the Shanghai Conservatoire.
Since 1993, he received numerous national and international awards. In 1994, his work Peking Opera Impression for mixed choir won 1st Prize of the Taiwan Provincial Orchestra Composition Competition; his New Century Overture was awarded a Symphonic Work Award for the Return of Hong Kong in 1997; the China Overture won the National Musical Works Awards for symphonic music; and The Prayers Come from the Jungles won the 2nd Prize at the 2002 CCA Taiwan International Composition Competition. In 2007, Late Autumn won the European Composer Award at the Young Euro Classic in Germany, resulting in a commission to compose the festival’s new anthem, Echo, for the 2008 edition, which was performed by all participating orchestras from all over the world and was highly praised as the “fanfare from China” by European media.
Ye attended the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt in 2000, and then finished his doctoral dissertation and monograph György Kurtág’s Musical Composition and Concept. In 2005, he was invited to GRAME in Lyon for a working visit on electronic music, where he produced the representative electronic Sound Space for erhu. He also successfully premiered another electronic work, Six Moments of Sound. Other main works include Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice for soprano and orchestra, Picture of Dancing Dragon, Music from the Tang Court for Asian instruments, voices, organ and orchestra.