Selina Liu

Biography

Selina Liu is a composer, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, librettist, collaborative pianist, and interdisciplinary music director. 

​Selina's works have been performed by student and professional musicians across North America, Europe, and Asia. Her chamber opera Princessée, a commentary on the gendered implications of music leadership and the sanctification of the hyperfeminine, was recently premiered at the Puccini Chamber Opera Festival in Lucca, Italy. Her work spans symphonic poems, big band compositions, lyrical scenes, art songs, and arias. As an arranger and orchestrator, she has extensive experience in vocal arrangement, cross-genre adaptation, and theatrical orchestration. Her creative process is rooted in research and history, with interests in macaronic text, cross-cultural recomposition, psychoanalysis, mysticism, semiotics, and feminine figures in opera.

As a conductor, Selina is active in orchestral, operatic, and music theatre settings. She has served as Assistant Conductor and Assistant Librarian with Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris and will join the Vienna Opera Academy as Assistant Conductor in 2026. Beyond the podium, she works as a collaborative pianist and vocal coach, and performs regularly as a pit musician for theatrical productions. Her long-term goal is to build communities of musical multilingualism, ensembles and educational spaces where musicians from disparate traditions can see their work not as marginal but as interconnected.

Selina holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Theatre from Northwestern University and will pursue a Master of Music degree in Composition at the Mannes School of Music in New York City.