Violinist Shaw Pong Liu first fell in love with the violin at age three, when she saw violinist Itzhak Perlman perform on “Sesame Street”. For this she is eternally grateful to her parents, who only let her watch PBS television as a kid. Now after many years of studying music, Shaw Pong still falls in love with the violin and music-making on a regular basis. Only love can explain what this warm-blooded Californian is doing in the freezing-cold Northeast, but indeed, finishing her Masters degree at the New England Conservatory, teaching violin classes to kids in Dorchester, and playing with talented friends like A Far Cry, make Boston a delightful place to live.
Shaw Pong’s passion for connecting with diverse audiences has taken her all over the world, from Berlin to Beijing. As a performer and producer of innovative, cross-cultural musical events, she seeks to engage communities who don’t normally have access to live music. Storytelling, narration, and theatrical devices (sets, costumes, lighting, and choreography of space) are interwoven with live music in her work.
Recent projects include Soldiers’ Tales Untold, a contemporary unraveling of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 fable A Soldier’s Tale with improvised music and the words, writings, and oral histories of actual 20th century soldiers; Jelly and Jelly Jam, a musical time machine exploration of an imaginary encounter between legendary jazz composer Jelly Roll Morton and Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi; Stone Soup, a musical re-telling of the classic fable with an international cast at the Banff Centre; and performances with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, in the world premieres of several new works. A graduate of the U.C. Berkeley and about-to-be-grad of the New England Conservatory of Music, Shaw Pong is an avid improviser and enthusiastic adventurer in Latin music, salsa, and jazz. Visit her at: www.shawpong.com.
