Yuchan Li is a composer from Beijing, born in 2004, whose music has been performed in New York City, Saratoga, North Carolina, Paris, Vilnius, China, and Thailand.
Musical formation and collaboration
She is currently studying composition at The Juilliard School in New York, where she also serves as an Ear Training and Theory Teaching Fellow. As an artist of the American Young Artists Association, she brings to its community a voice shaped by two traditions: the Chinese folk songs of her childhood and the contemporary craft she has refined at Juilliard.
Passionate about collaboration and the conversations it opens, Yuchan has worked with conductor Sun He, soprano Marisa Karchin, pianist Tianxu An, the American Modern Ensemble, the FortVio Piano Trio, the Tianjin Juilliard Pre-College Wind Ensemble, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, the Mostly Modern Orchestra, the Juilliard Summer Choir, and the Juilliard Orchestra. The American composer Richard Danielpour has described her as an artist possessing three essential qualities: curiosity, generosity, and compassion.
Yuchan Li
ComposerA voice shaped by two traditions
Her music is shaped by art, philosophy, and emotion in equal measure. Growing up in Beijing, she absorbed the folk songs that still run through her melodic language, and the implicit beauty and subtle expressiveness of Eastern art continue to define her aesthetic. Juilliard has given that sensibility a rigorous compositional foundation and a deeper musical insight; for Yuchan, whose principles in music, art, and life are drawn from the same source, composing is the natural outlet for her dreams and convictions.
Teaching and student leadership
At Juilliard she is the Student Leader of The Juilliard Chinese Student and Scholar Association. Her previous teachers include Niccolo Athens, Xiaohan Wang, and Melinda Wagner, and she currently studies with composer David Serkin Ludwig, Dean of Music at The Juilliard School.
