Graduating Student Recital • AMERICAN ANXIETY • Zishi Liu, saxophone

A native of China, Zishi Liu is a Boston-based saxophonist and music curator who was welcomed as a ‘surprise’ (The Bay State Banner) to the Boston jazz scene. As a performer and composer, Zishi’s music seeks to create and resolve new tensions between familiar and foreign themes. The melancholic aspects of Coltrane’s later work—which incorporates Eastern concepts of meditation and emptiness—serve as a departure point for his music.

His childhood coincided with a pivotal moment in 90s Asian pop music. As China reopened to the West, Chinese musical culture rapidly redefined itself, synthesizing Western pop harmonies and R&B stylings with the lyricality and sentiment of Chinese ballads.

Zishi has toured in the U.S, China, Malaysia, and Singapore and is active in the music scenes around New England. In 2023, Zishi will record his quartet’s debut album and organize a tour that traces the historical dissemination of jazz from the Occident to the Orient.