About
Dr. Jonathon Jie Hong Yang is an Australian composer of film, orchestral, game, theatre and instrumental music.
Jonathon is also an orchestral arranger and has arranged for a number of orchestras around Australia. He has had his works played by orchestras in the Perth Concert Hall, and played on radio including the ABC Radio National.
Jonathon is currently a casual academic at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Jonathon works extensively with sample libraries or virtual instrument (VST) and specialises in creating realistic renditions of orchestral music in Logic Pro X. Jonathon also regularly collaborates with musicians to have original works performed live.
Early in high school, Jonathon developed a strong interest for the music of film, television and games, which lead him to pursue study in music composition at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Jonathon graduated in 2020 with Bachelor of Music Honours First Class. Following that, Jonathon undertook a Doctor of Philosophy at WAAPA from 2022-2026.
As of April 2026, Jonathon holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Performing Arts) from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Jonathon's thesis consisted of a written dissertation with a folio of 80 minutes of original orchestral music. His research investigated how Chinese (minzu yinyue) musical elements and Western scoring techniques can be integrated to create a culturally hybrid approach to film scoring. The project involved the analysis of Tan Dun's Crouching Tiger Cello Concerto (2000) and John Powell's How to Train Your Dragon film score (2010). A significant part of the creative work submitted as part of his thesis was a 40 minute rescoring of scenes from season 3 of the animated series The Legend of Korra. (Press here to listen to the rescores)
His doctoral thesis (via exegesis and creative work) is viewable online via the ECU repository: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/3054/
Since 2026, Jonathon has also been providing music for Riot Studio's Golden Spatula (aka Team Fight Tactics).
Since 2025, Jonathon has been regularly commissioned to compose music for trailers, animation, and BGM for Morefun Studios' (Tencent) game Roco Kingdom: World. Music for Roco Kingdom is available on Jonathon's Youtube channel.
In 2023 Jonathon composed the track featured in the 1 year Anniversary celebration promotional videos as well as in game for the Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile game. (Click here to hear the track in game.)
In 2025, copies of all available musical scores of Jonathon's original music at the time were purchased by the State Library of Western Australia and stored in the WA Heritage Archives and recorded as a part of Western Australian cultural history. In 2026, a copy of his collection of 80 minutes of new orchestral music composed for his PhD thesis was also purchased by the State Library and similarly stored.
In 2022, over the period of roughly one month, Jonathon composed around 40 minutes of music for Barking Gecko Theatre's adaption of Shaun Tan's award winning book Cicada. The show has since gone on successful tours around Australia.
Jonathon was commissioned by Churchlands Senior High School to compose a new 5 min work for orchestra and massed choir. The piece, To the Greatest Heights was premiered at the Perth Concert Hall in 2022.
In 2021, Jonathon was awarded the award for Excellence in Composition by the WA Screen Academy for his work on three of the WASA short films (Drafted, Linger, and I am Ghost). For 2021, Jonathon composed original music for a total of 7 short films, and his first feature film.
In 2020, Jonathon was given the opportunity to compose a work that featured all corners of the WAAPA Classical Music course which resulted in an orchestral piece that included a full choir, saxophone section, and classical guitars. This piece, Brave the Wave, featured 124 musicians, with every individual part recorded on the musicians phones while in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. All the audio was edited, mixed, and mastered by Jonathon and then combined together to assemble a virtual orchestral performance. The recorded video was edited together and synchronise by Joey Eng. The work has been featured on ABC Classic Facebook page, Limelight Magazine Facebook page, Perth is Ok website, Mamamia, and Musicfeed.
Brave the Wave was performed by live in concert on two seperate occasions in 2021 at the Perth Concert Hall. First by the WAAPA Symphony Orchestra, and then by the Combined Anglican School Commission Orchestra.
Jonathon has been interviewed by Andrew Ford on the ABC The Music Show on ABC Radio National for his original composition 'Brave the Wave'. To hear the interview, click here. The work was also discussed in an article on the Guardian. (Click here to watch the Brave the Wave video.)
At the beginning of 2019, Jonathon's work Cartographer's Expedition (2017) performed by the Perth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jessica Gethin, at the Romance on the Green concert in Rockingham, Western Australia. The same work was performed again by PSO in 2022 once more at Romance on the Green. The following year in 2023, the work performed yet again by WAAPA Symphony Orchestra at the Perth Concert Hall.
Other performances include his piece SWE (Symphonic Wind Ensemble) Overture premiered by the WAAPA Symphonic Wind Ensemble as part of their 2020 Halloween SPOOKTACULAR Concert at the Perth Concert Hall, and his piece Leap of Faith (2019), performed by WAAPA in collaboration in PSO.
In 2018, Jonathon won the 2018 WAAPA Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition with his entry, Uncharted Valley, a 5 min piece heavily inspired by the visuals and imagery from the critically acclaimed video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The work was performed by the WAAPA Faith Court Orchestra and conducted by the Perth Symphony Orchestra musical director Jessica Gethin. (Click here to listen to a recording of Uncharted Valley.)
