Zola Saadi-Klein (b.2003), is an Iranian-American, genderfluid composer, vocalist, and artist, from Los Angeles, CA. For much of their work, they draw inspiration from their Persian and European heritage, exploring the cross-cultural bonds of music from the West and of the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. As a member of the Oberlin Buddhist Fellowship, they are interested in the concepts of how one perceives themselves in the present, and how that interconnectedness can be expressed through their music. The practice of mindfulness and concentration meditation has also deeply influenced their musical life; they often collaborate with like-minded creatives at Oberlin, and in the world at large most recently with artist, violist, singer and mathematician Illana McNamara, I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land (2023), and vocalist, poet, Molly Chun, Songs for Those Who Came Before (2024).

In 2020, they received the ASCAP Foundation Irving Berlin Scholarship Award. From 2019-2021, they were a Fellow in the LA Phil Composer Fellowship Program under the mentorship of Andrew Norman, Sarah Gibson, and Thomas Kotcheff. In 2020, they were selected to be a Luna Composition Lab Fellow—founded by Ellen Reid and Missy Mazzoli—during the 2020-2021 season where they were mentored by composer and pianist, Gity Razaz. Currently, Zola studies composition with Professor Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Michael Frazier, at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.