Overview
Addi Liu is a baroque violinist and music historian. His dissertation project, “Looping Hands: A Global Music History of Guidonian Hands and Chinese Palm Diagrams,” charts the global crossings of music-theoretical artifacts—specifically hand mnemonic diagrams—between early modern Europe and late-imperial China, and broadly examines the hand as a musical interface from early modern improvisatory practices to 21st-century digital manifestations.
He is an academic network member of the research group “Knowing Hands Chinese Hand-memory Techniques & Handy Knowledge in Situ, Comparison, and Contact,” and has presented papers and lecture recitals at the meetings of the American Musicological Society, Society of Seventeenth-Century Music (Irene Alm Memorial Prize), Musicking: Culturally Informed Performance Practices, Instruments of Global Music Theory Symposium, Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, and Renaissance Society of America.
As a baroque violin and viola player, he is broadly interested in performance practice related to early bowed-string instruments and the historiography of the Early Music movement. He can be heard on the vielle in the album “The Open Gate,” and an essay interrogating language usage by music critics on performers appeared in EMag: The Magazine of Early Music America. He has performed with Apollo’s Fire, Les Délices, Bourbon Baroque, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Hong Kong Early Music Society, Bitterroot Baroque, Early Music Michigan, as well as numerous period instrument ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area. Formative mentors include Julie Andrijeski, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Marc Destrubé, and Sigiswald Kuijken. At Cornell University, he co-directs Cornell’s Early Music Lab which explores seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art music through period instruments and primary sources. His ongoing research on historical bow holds is accessible at the Historical Bow Holds Project (historicalbowholds.com).
Raised in Hong Kong before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, he studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's preparatory and collegiate divisions. He received a Doctorate in Musical Arts in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University with a lecture-recital thesis titled “Sounding Arcadia in China: The Music of Teodorico Pedrini (1671–1746).” He was supported by the Rowfont Book Club (Cleveland), and Early Music America's Emerging Artists Showcase grant in collaboration with singer-harpist Anna O’Connell.
He currently resides in Ithaca, NY, where he enjoys putting tropical plants in glass terrariums to maximize their chances of survival under minimal care. He is a PhD candidate in Music and Sound Studies at Cornell University.
Publications
“A Sino-European Guidonian Hand in 17th-Century Beijing.” In Knowing Hands, edited by Stéphanie Homola and Marta Hanson, digital exhibition (invited, in preparation).
“A Chinese Guidonian Hand in Lülü zuanyao (c. 1685 C.E.)” In Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory, edited by Thomas Christensen, Lester Hu, and Carmel Raz (University of Chicago CORPUS, forthcoming).
“A ‘Looping’ Guidonian Hand and Circular Diagram of the Gamut in Manuel Nunes da Silva’s Arte minima (1685 C.E).” In Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory, edited by Thomas Christensen, Lester Hu, and Carmel Raz (University of Chicago CORPUS, forthcoming).
“Reckoning with a Chinese Guidonian Hand.” History of Music Theory (Blog), January 28, 2025. https://historyofmusictheory.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/reckoning-with-a-chinese-guidonian-hand/.
With Caroline Lesemann-Elliott. “20th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music. Haute École de Musique de Genève, 28 June–2 July 2023.” Early Music Performance & Research, no. 52 (Winter 2023): 51–54.
“How Did Early Music Get So ‘Crispy’?” EMAg, The Magazine of Early Music America 28, no. 2 (May 2022): 40–47.