Katie Liu, viola
Katie Liu joined the Seattle Symphony in September of 2024 as their Associate Principal Viola. She switched to the viola in her senior year at Princeton University, where she concentrated in Operations Research and Financial Engineering and minored in Computer Science and Musical Performance. She has had prior corporate working experience in asset management and fintech consulting and started pursuing viola as the winner of the Princeton University Concerto Competition in her junior year; as a soloist, she has performed with the Princeton University Orchestra and Colburn Orchestra. After graduating Princeton, she received her Master of Music degree at the Colburn School under the tutelage of Paul Coletti and Teng Li, where she was also the principal violist of the American Youth Symphony.
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During her graduate years in the studio of Ettore Causa at the Yale School of Music, she was section violist at the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and was a semi-finalist at the 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition and 2023 Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition. As a student, her festival experience included the NUME Academy, Verbier Festival Academy Soloists’ Programme, Music@Menlo’s International Program, KronbergAcademy’s Chamber Music Connects the World programme, and YellowBarn. She was named one of Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach’s 2026 Rising Artists.
Katie performs occasionally with the New York Philharmonic and has gone on tour with them to Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai. An active and avid chamber musician, she was a guest artist at the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, Emerald City Music, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, Aspect Chamber Music series, and Music on Park Avenue and Princeton Chamber Music series with pianist Per Tengstrand. Her upcoming engagements include performances at the Music@Menlo Winter Residency and Chamber Music Northwest.
Katie plays on a viola made for her by Frédéric Chaudière in 2024.