Jacky Jiaqi Liu
Jacky Jiaqi Liu (b. 2002) is a multi-award-winning Chinese composer based in New York City. Recognized for his poetic, diverse, and dramatic expression, Liu writes music that reflects universal values such as compassion, belonging, and love, inspired by philosophical and literary influences. As a recipient of the Frederick Loewe Scholarship in Composition at The Juilliard School, Liu earned his BM in Composition under Melinda Wagner and will pursue his MM in Composition with John Corigliano.
A recipient of the 2026 John Adams Award of the BMI Composer Awards, Liu is also a two-time winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2023, 2026) and the Arthur Friedman Prize from the Juilliard Orchestra Competition (2024, 2026). Other accolades include the 2024 Charles Ives Award in Chamber Music from the American Prize and the 2023 Juilliard Gena Raps String Quartet Prize, among others.
Liu’s compositions have been performed across the U.S., Europe, South Korea, Japan, and China, with recent highlights including the world premieres of his “View in Spring” with Grammy®-winning conductor Lucas Richman and members of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in 2022, the 2024 premiere of his string quartet “Heart! We Will Forget Him!” at Lincoln Center, and the 2024 premiere of his first orchestral work “Crossing” with conductor Jeffrey Milarsky and the Juilliard Orchestra at Lincoln Center. In October 2024, Liu was invited as a featured composer for the musicON Festival, where his chamber music work was performed at the America’s National Opera Center in New York. In 2025, his piano-vocal work was featured in the SOLI Chamber Ensemble’s national tour. In 2026, he collaborated again with Jeffrey Milarsky and the Juilliard Orchestra on the premiere of his second orchestral work “Echoes of Impermanence” at Lincoln Center in New York.
As a passionate educator, Liu has served as a faculty member at the Long Island Music Conservatory and as a judge for the 11th Annual Youth Music Composition Competition in 2024.
Special thanks to
Team River Road:
for their sponsorship of Jacky Jiaqi Liu throughout the project.
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Composed March 2023 – Voice, Piano
From the composer: “The title of this piece comes from the last sentence of Two Loves, a poem written by the English poet Lord Alfred Douglas. It’s widely assumed that Bosie wrote this poem given to his lover, the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. Soon after, the continuous gossip that resulted from the love affair reached Douglas’s father – the Marquis of Queensberry. This poem was deemed to be the testimony of their scandalous relationship that led Wilde to the trial where he was convicted of sodomy and gross indecency in 1895.
I chose this poem to set the music because how beautiful and elegant this poem is, and I believe the implicit message in this poem is still meaningful in today’s society.“
See in Performance
