Zora Li, Pianist
A studio session before a debut

The Story

Zora Li is a concert pianist trained at the Royal Academy of Music. At 24 she had already played most of the major halls of Europe — but not, until October 2023, the Esplanade in Singapore, where she grew up. Her debut was scheduled for that December: Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, Beethoven's Sonata No. 32, and a contemporary Singaporean commission by composer Chen Zhangyi.

We were introduced to her by her management — Askonas Holt — about three months before the concert. They wanted a portrait set that could anchor her press coverage in Singapore, but also work for her global poster materials going forward. The brief was specific: she did not want to look like a stock classical musician.

"The kind of photographs you find yourself going back to, months after you stop showing them to people."

She arrived at the studio on a Monday afternoon with her own grand piano. (She had it transported from her family home, where she still practises, on a hired flatbed truck. It took two hours to move and two more to tune.) We worked in three setups: against a deep grey paper backdrop for the press shots; at the piano in window light for the editorial set; and a small intimate corner with a single softbox and a black background for the portfolio masters.

The whole session took just under four hours. Zora played for most of it — small fragments between frames, full passages while we adjusted lights. Our favourite photograph is the one of her hands resting on the keys, not playing — captured in the half-second between two pieces. It went on to become the cover of her Esplanade programme.