Alicia Lieu, composer/conductor, was recently awarded a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts for her new opera, UNWRAPPING FORTUNE. She is the Artistic Director of Musikapiphany chamber ensemble and the creator of DANCE-IT-YOURSELF NUTCRACKER™️ for dancers, orchestra, and audience participation. She grew up playing the piano, flute, and trombone in San Jose, California, earned her Bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara where she studied composition with Dr. Leslie Hogan, won first prize in the UCSB Wind Ensemble Composition Competition, and received the honor of speaking at her graduation ceremony. She completed her Master of Music in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory under Elinor Armer and was awarded the Kris Getz Composition Prize. In Paris, France, she studied in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger and premiered three of her works. In Paris, Alicia learned under the tutelage of Dr. Philip Lasser of The Juilliard School, Narcis Bonet, Mark Shapiro, and Ecole Normale de Musique faculty member Michel Merlet. Alicia spent time abroad in Shanghai, China studying Chinese music composition, Chinese, and piano. Alicia then moved to New York City to study composition, counterpoint, and harmony with Dr. Philip Lasser. She has been a teaching artist with Kollage Community School for the Arts, Midori and Friends, and the San Francisco Conservatory where she also served as the Conservatory in the Schools Outreach Coordinator. She is the founder of three organizations in New York City, Composers Collective, Pitches Brew, and New York Conducting Institute. Alicia has conducted in master classes in New York, St. Petersburg, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. Her teachers include Maestros John Keenan and Paul Nadler of the New York Metropolitan Opera and has also been coached by Don Schleicher, Larry Rachleff, Diane Wittry, Mark Stringer, Alexander Polishchuk, Kirk Trevor, Tomas Netopil. She is currently pursuing her Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting at The University of Texas at El Paso, studying with Maestro Bohuslav Rattay. 

Read about NYCI in Forbes (link below)!