Yi Yao started the piano and accordion aged five. She has been an active performer since childhood. At the age of twelve she played a solo recital at the Beijing Concert Hall, the main concert hall in Beijing.

In 2003, Yi graduated with First Class Honours and with Postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy of Music of London, where she studied for five years with Owen Murray, focusing on accordion and piano. Whilst there, Yi has won acclaim from the some of the best musicians in the world, Frederich Lips, Mie Miki, Oleg Sharov and others.
 
Yi has toured extensively, having played in Sweden, Malaysia, Italy, Thailand and Egypt as well as within China. She has also made several recordings, and was featured on the Chinese Central Television Corporation.

She has won numerous prizes in Chinese and International competitions on both piano and accordion, such as the First Prize at the Accordion Festival in Scotland and in the Anglo-Czech Competition, resulting in a performance in Prague. In 2000, she premiered Gordon Jacob’s Accordion Concerto in China. In 2001, she was invited to perform at the London Accordion Festival and with the prestigious Halle Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. In December 2002, she won 4th Prize and the prize for the ‘Best Performance of the Test Piece’ at the ‘Arrasate Hiria’ International Accordion Competition, one of the largest and most prestigious internationally. Her recording with Naxos with the renowned conductor Jose Serebrier was nominated twice for the Grammys in 2004.
 
In the recent months, she has appeared as concerto soloist in Cambridge, performing in a series of concerts in China with her 6-piece chamber group, Panoply, as well as playing in Bangkok. She is also experienced in performing on cruises and is currently involved in organising an upcoming concert tour of China for her group Panoply. Yi is also a visiting professor for Guang Zhou Zhao Qing university , some of her duties is giving lectures and master class for two thousand students.