Katie Liu (23)

Born and raised in New Jersey, Katie Liu is a Master of Music Candidate at The Colburn School in the studio of Paul Coletti. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University '20, concentrating in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with certificates in Computer Science and Musical Performance. She picked up the violin at age 5 and the viola in January of 2018 on a whim, instantly falling in love with the instrument.

In her early violin years, she studied with Duoming Ba of the New York Philharmonic, and is an alumna of The Juilliard School Pre-College Division ‘16, where she studied with Masao Kawasaki. She served as concertmaster of the Bravura Youth Orchestra and won numerous competitions, performing extensively and soloing with the Bravura Philharmonic, New Jersey Youth Orchestra, and the Summit Symphony. She was a prizewinner of the National YoungArts Foundation in 2015.

Katie made her solo viola debut in 2019 with the Princeton University Orchestra as a winner of the Princeton University Concerto Competition and toured with Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand in his Beethoven Safari tour in August 2019. In her time at Princeton, she performed with both the Richardson Chamber Players and the New York Piano Society as a guest artist and has held principal positions on both instruments in the Princeton University Orchestra. She studied with Eric Wyrick on both violin and viola, and was an active member of Opus, the campus chamber group. Aside from her musical pursuits, Katie has also had summer working experiences in asset management, and wrote her senior thesis on the intersection of classical music recognition techniques, machine learning, and neural networks.

She is currently the Principal Violist of the American Youth Symphony for its upcoming seasons, and previously attended the New York String Orchestra Seminar in December of 2020. In the summer of 2021, Katie will attend the Gstaad Menuhin Festival String Academy and work in FinTech consulting.