Hi! I'm Liam! I am a violinist, pianist, composer, and arranger! I am currently studying as an undergraduate Senior at Yale University, taking private violin lessons with Kyung Yu during the school year and Mark Paxson during the summer, and I am heavily involved in two orchestras on campus: The Davenport Pops Orchestra, for which I am concertmaster and head arranger, and the Berkeley College Orchestra, where I am principal second violinist. I also play in a piano trio on campus, affiliated with the Berkeley College Orchestra. I teach private violin lessons to elementary and middle school students, and coach chamber music at the Burnside Summer Music Festival in my hometown of Arlington, MA.
In high school, I participated in many youth music groups as well. I played with the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra for a year, as well as the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras for three years. In 2017 I won their Repertory Orchestra concerto competition with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and performed it with them, and the following year I was concertmaster of the Repertory Orchestra. I also was concertmaster of the Arlington High School Orchestra and Honors Orchestra, and had two of my original compositions performed by them: a string ensemble piece which I conducted in 2018, and a violin concerto which I soloed on in 2019. I also played with the Lexington Chamber Music Center, a youth chamber music organization which specializes in outreach concerts for assisted living communities.
My performance style is free and highly expressive. I pride myself on my musicality and bringing my own interpretation to any piece of music, while maintaining a high level of technical skill and accuracy. While I am primarily classically trained on both the violin and piano, I enjoy and have played many styles of music, including jazz, contemporary classical, pop, and video game soundtracks. I am also very interested in music outside the Western tradition, including many Middle Eastern and South Asian styles, though I do not claim to be proficient in them. The violin is my more serious instrument, but I love playing the piano for fun!
My original compositions draw heavily on the Western classical tradition, especially string chamber music, and are also heavily inspired by video game composers such as David Fenn, Lena Raine, Christopher Larkin, and Toby Fox. My pieces feature rich, twisting harmonies, central, lyrical melodies, and complex rhythms. I am most comfortable writing for strings and piano, but I am beginning to branch out into more instrumentations. I studied composition with Derek David for 3 years and have studied in Yale's Undergraduate Composition Seminar for 3 semesters.
I also have a passion for arranging music, through which I have developed a deep knowledge of orchestration and an extremely practiced ear. I love turning music that was previously only electronic into a form that instrumentalists can play, and putting my own spin on pieces to create an exciting live performance. In my time as head arranger of the Davenport Pops Orchestra, I have helped to craft concert programs full of varied popular music for audiences that have reached upwards of 1000 people. I have produced arrangements on my own, collaboratively with other orchestra members, and coached others to develop and perfect their own arrangements for the orchestra, in addition to arranging for smaller ensembles and my own recordings on the side.
If you want to check out any of the stuff I've made, be sure to head to the other pages on my website to hear and see my performances, compositions, and arrangements! Or if you want to contact or commission me, go to my contact page!