A Taiwanese composer and musicologist born November 11, 1977.
A pianist by training, Lin-Ni Liao studied composition at the National Taiwan Normal University, where she obtained her diploma in 2000. She then settled in France and studied with Yoshihisa Taïra at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Allan Gaussin, Franck Bedrossian, Philippe Leroux, Thierry Blondeau and Gilles Racot were also her teachers. She advanced her knowledge of French culture at the Sorbonne, where she presented a DEA memoire on La pensée musicale d’Édith Lejet (published in 2009) then, under the direction of Marc Battier, a thesis entitled Héritage culturel et pensée moderne – les compositeurs taïwanais de musique contemporaine formés à l’étranger (published in 2015). She has also written numerous articles on music analysis and cultural identity.
Lin-Ni Liao composes while searching for a musical and philosophical fusion of time and space, of the physical and the musical gesture, of the visual and the aural. In chamber music she has notably written: Imamusi for viola, guitar, bass saxophone and piano (2008); Le train de la vie V – Alison, for electric guitar and electronics (2014); Time of Trees I for gestures of two pianists, bronze bowl and shadows (2016). Her works for solo instrument have enabled her to study the characteristics of the emission of sound and of resonance, as in p. 53 for guitar (2008) and Tty for large tam-tam (2011).
Gifted with synaesthesia, Lin-Ni Liao perceives sounds as lights of different intensities. This sensitivity led her to suggest in her music the play of shadow and light. She has also been inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, notably in Poussière dans le vent for flute, violin, cello and piano (2013) and One Bird, One Tree, commissioned by Radio France, for erhu, accordion and piano (2017).
Lin-Ni Liao is artistic director of TPMC (‘All for contemporary music’), an association that promotes contemporary music through an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach with a reciprocal view of the Far East and the West.
