About

Recognized as one of top 30 AI technologies at a global scale by AI XPRIZE, and the only competition team involving the AI music technology, Mercury Orbit Music is the first ever super intelligence–driven music ecosystem.

About Us

We designed a novel AI music platform which cultivates human/machine interaction, generating new material to kick-start musical inspiration.

Create Music

We designed and implemented a novel AI music platform which allows interaction with users, and generates new material for kick-starting user inspiration

Educate Music Learners

We cover most music curriculums through the integration of Al music program services built on human/machine creative collaborations/

Cutting Edge AI System

We are training our A.I. to create, perceive, and resonate with musicians in many stimulating ways.

Our Team

Yang Zhang, founder and C.E.O. of Mercury Orbit Music, is a Los-angeles based winning composer and entrepreneurial executive. She has demonstrated a diverse work experience that crosses different functional expertise in the fields of music production/creation, entrepreneurship, digital media/digital music, international content business development, as well as global sales/branded marketing.

At the beginning of 2020, she was selected as the TED TALK Speaker in 2020. By the end of 2018, she successfully led her interdisciplinary team to be selected as the only one concerning A.I. music among the top 30 A.I. technologies by AI XPRIZE. In 2019, her team was selected to demonstrate the novel A.I. technology at A.I. For Good Summit in Geneva, partnered with United Nations, ITU and AI XPRIZE. Her market validation credits included successfully securing 13 license agreements with educational institutions both in the U.S. and China, combined with a package of endorsements lining up two California-based school districts.

Music creation: Her film scoring project titled “The World is A Retro ” won the best music category for 2016 Montreal “ views of the world” film and music festival competition. She is an award-winning composer and an active member of Academy Television Art & Science in the music peer group.

Currently, she is exclusively represented by a venteran music publisher Andrew Robbins, known for securing multiple music placements for two-times Oscar winning pictures, including 2014 “Crush” and 2018 “The Shape of Water”. In 2009, endorsed by China Universal Record, as the China New Generation of Electronic Music Producers, she released her single titled “The Road To Wutumeiren ” into the compilation album named “Opposite House Vol 1”.

Business aspects: In addition to her music creation endeavor, she also has been active in the fields of music publishing business, senior entrepreneurial entertainment, and international content business developments. In 2013 and 2014, she had been exclusively authorized by Fine Tune Music and Chemistry Music as a sub-publisher to exploit music licensing proprietaries in the territory of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Before finding her music startup, she has been working closely with music mogul Kerry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records for his joint venture titled Swagg Media, responsible for international corporate partners for cross-promotional programs, content development, and licensing deal-flow of I.P. rights from T.V., films, and other digital properties. In 2013, she successfully led and executed the marketing expansion for Kerry Gordy’s Television series titled “The Jadagrace Show” in China, as well as increasing the exposure for the content and talent resources on the China-based TV interview show titled “Hello Hollywood,” reaching over 600 million viewers in total.

Education: She received an M.A. degree in music composition from Central Conservatory of music, Beijing, China; a B.A. degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China.

A serial entrepreneur demonstrated an extensive range of working experiences crossing the field of ABRSM system development, I.T. product developments and distributions, brand implementation and strategic planning in the Chinese market, as well as sales within his past 25 years. Some of his highlighted credits include the full investment, development, and execution of establishing an ABRSM training center in Guangzhou back to 2010, and achieving the passing rate of 98%. Additionally, he developed a robust ABRSM sales network by unifying more than 100 training centers, with the extensive coverage of more than 200,000 students participating in the ABRAM exam, primarily centered in the South of China. Other featured credits include the exclusive representative of the top brand L.G. from South Korea; 

The major distributor for Compaq Computer in 2001 and became the core distributor for the whole line of H.P. computers in China, as well as the core distributor of Samsung in 2003. His establishments also consist of three sold-out startups back to 2000, 2001, and 2003. He graduated from Guangdong University of Technology in 1993.

Maximos Kaliakatsos-Papakostas is a principal researcher at Mercury Orbit Music, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing of Athena Research and Innovation Center (ILSP/ATHENA RIC), and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Music Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has obtained a personal research grant from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. Besides, he has also worked as a post-doctoral researcher on the Concept Invent Theory (COINVENT) project (2013-2016) at the School of Music studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During the COINVENT project, his research focused on the development of algorithms for generative conceptual blending in harmony, while he was also the primary developer of the CHAMELEON melodic harmonization assistant prototype. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics, University of Patras, Greece since 2014 where he graduated in 2006 and received his M. Sc. Diploma in Computational Intelligence since 2009. During his Ph.D., he had the chance to develop several algorithms for music information retrieval and automatic music generation. His current research interests include the application of Artificial Intelligence, focusing on Conceptual Blending, Machine Learning, and Evolutionary Algorithms, in music information retrieval and automatic music composition. In parallel, he is an independent iOS music apps developer and freelance music/audio programmer.

 

Andrew is a highly regarded, innovative, and detail-orientated entertainment executive within the demonstrated expertise in film directing, TV/trailer/film music licensing, music publishing, song catalogs, and post-audio elements. 

By bringing over more than two decades of first-hand industry experiences and studio relations, he established and developed a direct music license network composed of hundreds of strong relationships with the principal producers, editors and music supervisors. 

During his career, he contributed more than over 29,000 additional music placements in feature films, network/cable television programs, and feature film trailers. He succeeded multiple music placements in the Best Picture Oscar-winning film “Crash.” Other movies and trailers credits include Jungle Book, Pyramid, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Two Night Stand, Stigmata, Memento, Bad Santa and Big Fish, to mention but a few. Established capabilities in sales, performance income management, and network relations management.

He has been served the role as Sr.Director/Director of film/TV music for several top Hollywood-based music publishing & production companies and record label, including Manhattan Production Music/Chesky Records, Music Box, and Megatrax, to name just a few. 

During his management execution, he grew viable licensing client base at a rate of 45% per year; increased sale at a rate of 30% per year, secured licensing rights to exclusive representation for multiple music catalogs. Supplementary, he is an active speaker and featured panelist at yearly industry influence conferences, such as Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Magazine Film & TV Music Conference, ASCAP Expo, Sync Summit, etc.

Dimos (Dimosthenis) Makris is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Informatics Department of Ionian University and a senior researcher/programmer at Mercury Orbit Music. Besides, he is the owner of Recording Studio facilities and is working as Audio Engineer and Music Producer at Corfu, Greece. 

His Ph.D. research includes applications of Artificial Intelligence focusing on symbolic data in the Music Information Retrieval (MIR) field, and he has recently been granted from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. So far his publications are referring to Music Generation, Music Data Mining and Track separation/ Instrument recognition research fields. 

He has also worked as a research assistant on the Concept Invent Theory (COINVENT) project (2013-2016) at the School of Music studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received his M. Sc. Diploma with the title “Information technology on Humanistic Applications” in 2014 where he created the first Greek Music Dataset for research purposes. 

His current research interests include Deep Learning Architectures for Intelligent Music Generation of separate instruments (especially Drums). Finally, he holds a diploma on Music Theory and Harmony and is an active piano player.

 

John Lennon Ellis, Grammy Nominated Music Educator both in 2014 and 2015, has a long establishment in the field of music education, academically and professionally. As a music educator over 30 years of first-hand teaching experience, he has always been to seek and utilize ways that music can impact all of our communities in positive ways. 

As a board member of the Grammy Music Education Committee, he provides consulting services concerning how to foster the value of high-quality music education. In parallel with educational consultant service, he serves multiple roles as national director, consulting council member, and educational manager. He covers a wide range of educational institutions and organizations to supervise faculty of music teachers, oversee curriculum and lesson plan development for music students. Besides, he does all research and implements the latest trends and best practices in music education, substitutes when necessary for teachers and conductors. Those music education based institutions and organizations including but not limited to: BAND FOR TODAY, INC, Gerson Lehrman Group, D’Addario & Company, Inc, Woodwind Studies, to name just a few. Before that, he holds the B.A at The Honsinger Conservatory of Music and M.B.A at Chadwick University.

 

Dimitris Chatzilias is a UI/UX Designer at Mercury Orbit Music. His main focus is Graphical User Interfaces Design, Design Systems development including Design Guidelines and their integration into CSS frameworks, UX Architecture, Prototyping, 2D Animation and static UI Web Development (HTML/CSS/JS). He holds a MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from the School of Computer Science & Communication of the Royal Technical University of Sweden (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm, where he studied from 2013 to 2015. He also holds a MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the School of Engineering of University of Patras in Greece (2001-2007) and a Professional Stock Broker Certificate from the Hellenic Republic Capital Market Commission (2011). He has worked in the IT industry as a UI/UX Designer/Developer on a social-professional network product for a startup based in the USA (Regestra, 2018-present) which he has also co-founded, as a UI/UX Designer on big data products for telcos (Niometrics, 2016-2018), as a Technical Artist on computer games (Aeria Games, 2016), and as a GUI Designer on various freelance projects. Before that, he has worked in the Construction Industry as a Mechanical Engineer (engineering office S. Dimitriou, 2008-2013), and in the Finance sector as a Stock Broker (Pegasus Securities Investment Services S.A., 2012-2016). As side projects, he has released three music books, that constitute a mini-series about Greek folk music (Nine Eight book series) and a children’s book which he has written and partially illustrated (Lex, 2017).
Vangelis (Evangelos) Kakarougkas is a music teacher at the Rock Music School of Corfu and a Music Expert at Mercury Orbit Music. He was born and raised in Athens and stayed there until the age of 28. He started his music studies at the age of 8 and studied the piano and the French horn simultaneously. During his years to Athens he was an active musician and composer and played the keyboards for a progressive metal band called Equal Vector in which he participated in composing and also took part in two other bands, Kinetic and Schooldrivers. He performed live at plenty concerts and some that it’s worth mentioning are Rockwave in 2007 (Heaven n’ Hell, Dream Theater, Iced Earth, Anathema, Kinetic), Arch Enemy, Kinetic in 2007 and Pain of Salvation, Wastefall and Equal Vector in 2004. After moving to the island of Corfu, he took the Diploma of Counterpoint and Fugue at the Diethnes Odeio Athinas (National Conservatory of Athens) and entered and finished his studies at the Music Department of the Ionian. This time his band Sedate Illusion has 4 studio albums and he also joined the Rock Music School of Corfu as a piano teacher in September of 2018. Vangelis will contribute to Mercury Orbit Music with his music skills for efficient annotation of our musical database.
Maria Maltezou is a composer and graduate from the Ionian University of Corfu and the Royal Holloway University of London, with a specification on composition for performing arts and contemporary performance art respectively. In addition, she is a Music Expert at Mercury Orbit Music where she supervises and evaluates all the music-related A.I. operations. She has composed music for theatre, video-art and dance theatre performances, as well as several short contemporary theatre performances. She is currently working as a freelance piano and music theory tutor and is also an experienced piano accompanist and flautist. Her compositional work focus on political performance for mixed media, using creative processes inspired by various disciplines. She is currently an MRes student at the Bath Spa University, in England. Her practical research focuses on scoring techniques for mixed-media artworks and nonconventional musical forms, and on the development of a personal notational system based on interdisciplinary work. Maria has participated in various seminars and workshops conducted by famous composers such as M. Stroppa, S. Milstein, K. Gourgi, Ph. Cashian, Th. Simaku and W. Brooks. She was one of the main organizers of the Royal Holloway’s Drama Department winter and summer festivals in the academic year 2015-2016.
Alexandra Charalampidi is a student in the Audiovisual Arts Department at Ionian University and a full time intern in Mercury Orbit Music. She is mainly focused on creative coding and interactive audiovisual systems. Alexandra has worked on interactive art projects and installations and contributes to Mercury Orbit Music on creative web applications which have familiarized her with different programming languages such as Javascript, CSS, Supercollider and Processing.
Theodoros Armenis is a graduate from the Information Technology Department of the Technological Institute of Thessaloniki. During the last decade he has worked as a Web Designer/Developer for companies such as Artoo, Open.Tech, Digital Wise and GlobalSol as well as a freelancer. Over the past years he had the opportunity to work on numerous challenging projects both individually and as part of a larger team. The projects he has undertaken cover various types and they range from single page online presentations for small offline businesses to custom designed online shops integrated with payment gateways. He currently provides support, maintenance and upgrades, in order to keep up with the latest technological standards to dozens of websites. Currently, he contributes as the head Web Developer at Mercury Orbit Music. The tools and technologies Theodoros uses are mostly HTML, CSS, JQuery and PHP. He has also acquired proficient skills in database management especially MySQL and MariaDB. His favorite web framework for many years has been WordPress, where he has advanced skills that cover custom theme and plugin development, tweaks and customizations to the framework’s core and many more. All of the above provide the ability to provide custom tailored solutions to fit any client’s needs. The demand for online presence by business owners is quite high during our days, so Theodoros has learned to work fast under tight deadlines without sacrificing quality. He is always keen on keeping up with the latest technology trends and strives to incorporate them in his projects in order to provide the best result in terms of design, accessibility and performance.