Overview
Addi Liu is a Ph.D. student in Music and Sound Studies at Cornell University. His research interests broadly consider the transmission of music theory and material culture between early
modern Europe and China. He has presented at the meetings of the American Musicological Society, Society of Seventeenth-Century Music (Irene Alm Memorial Prize), Musicking:
Culturally Informed Performance Practices, Case Western Reserve University’s Music Colloquium Series, Instruments of Global Music Theory Symposium, and the Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music.
As a baroque violin and viola player, his interests span from performance practice issues to the history of the Early Music movement. An essay on language usage by music critics on early
music 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, as well as numerous period instrument ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area. An alumnus of various music festivals including Aspen, Berwick, Amherst, Tafelmusik
(Summer and Winter Institutes), American Bach Soloists Summer Academy, and La Petite Bande Summer Academy, influential mentors include Elizabeth Blumenstock, Marc Destrubé,
and Sigiswald Kuijken. His research on interpreting iconography of bow holds resulted in the ongoing Historical Bow Holds Project at historicalbowholds.com.
Raised in Hong Kong, he later studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music's preparatory and collegiate divisions under Jodi Levitz and received a Bachelor and Master of Music. He received a DMA in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University where he studied baroque violin with Julie Andrijeski. He has been supported by grants from the
Rowfont Book Club (Cleveland) and Early Music America's Emerging Artists Showcase with singer and harpist Anna O’Connell. At Cornell, he directs the Early Music Lab, an ensemble exploring seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art music through period instruments
and primary sources.
Publications
Lesemann-Elliott, Caroline, and Addi Liu. “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.
Addi Liu, “How Did Early Music Get So ‘Crispy’?” EMAg, The Magazine of Early Music America 28, no. 2 (May 2022): 40–47.