Dr Ji Liu
Dr Ji Liu
Ji Liu combines a distinguished and multifaceted career as a pianist, composer, scholar and educator. As an international soloist, he has performed at venues and festivals including Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, Auditorium du Louvre, Royal Concertgebouw and the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing. At Classic FM’s 25th anniversary, Ji Liu performed for His Majesty King Charles III and other distinguished guests at Dumfries House.
Research interests and areas of supervision:
- Programming strategy
- Historically informed and contemporary performance practices
- Participatory performance and audience studies
- Performing (and composing and reworking) unfinished works and works with extended form
- Researching silence
- Schubert studies
- Performance Science
- Applied Technology in Music-Making (machine learning and generative AI)
Biography
Ji Liu has worked with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Beijing’s NCPA Orchestra, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, etc. He gave the world premieres of Ludovico Einaudi’s Piano Concerto Domino with RLPO and Boris Bergmann’s The Richter Scale and China premieres of Philip Glass’s Complete Piano Etudes and Frederic Rzewski’s People United Will Never Be Defeated! Variations.
As a published composer, Ji Liu has written for orchestras, chamber ensembles and solo instruments. His 18-hour Sonata Fantasy was certified as “The Longest Ever Released Instrumental Work” by the Guinness World Record. His discography encompasses repertoires from the Baroque period to the 21st century.
His research has been presented at institutions such as the University of Oxford, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Orpheus Institute and the University of California.
Ji Liu studied Piano Performance with Professor Christopher Elton and Composition with Professor Ruth Byrchmore at the Royal Academy of Music. He holds a PhD in Music (supervised by Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson) from King’s College London and received the Forrest Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowship. Shanghai FM94.7 appointed him the Inaugural Music Ambassador. Since 2018, Ji Liu has served as the Head of Performance at the Kent International Piano Course and is a visiting professor at Shenzhen University.