Overview
Addi Liu is interested in the transmission of music theory and material culture between early modern Europe and late Ming/early Qing China. He 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, 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, he is broadly interested in performance practice related to early bowed-string instruments and the historiography of the Early Music movement. An essay on 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, as well as numerous period instrument ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area. Influential mentors include Elizabeth Blumenstock, Marc Destrubé, and Sigiswald Kuijken. His ongoing research on historical bow holds is accessible at the Historical Bow Holds Project (historicalbowholds.com).
Raised in Hong Kong, he studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music's preparatory and collegiate divisions under Jodi Levitz where he was awarded a Departmental Award of Excellence. He later received a DMA in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University where he studied baroque violin with Julie Andrijeski and produced a lecture-recital document titled “Sounding Arcadia in China: The Music of Teodorico Pedrini (1671–1746).” He has been supported by grants from the Rowfont Book Club (Cleveland) and Early Music America's Emerging Artists Showcase in collaboration with singer-harpist Anna O’Connell. He is a PhD student in Music and Sound Studies at Cornell University, where he also co-directs Cornell’s Early Music Lab, an ensemble exploring seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art music through period instruments and primary sources.
Publications
“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.