Selina Liu is an early-career composer, conductor, librettist, dramaturg, orchestrator, collaborative pianist, theatre professional, and interdisciplinary music director. 

Selina’s compositions have been performed by student and professional musicians across North America, Europe, and Asia. Her chamber opera Princessée, which explores the gendered implications of music leadership, was recently premiered at the Puccini Chamber Opera Festival in Lucca, Italy. Her compositional output includes symphonic poems, big band works, lyrical scenes, art songs, and arias. As an arranger and orchestrator, she has extensive experience in vocal arrangement, cross-genre adaptation, and theatrical orchestration. She is currently developing the score and libretto for a choreographic opera inspired by the life of sculptor Camille Claudel.

Composition and research interests: macaronic text, cross-cultural recomposition, psychoanalysis, mysticism, semiotics, changing individuals in a world that refuses change, desires of the flesh made sacred, sanctification is still objectification, performance of femininity in global music theatre, etc.

As a conductor, Selina works across orchestral, operatic, and music theatre settings. She served as a conducting and music library assistant with the historic Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris, contributing to five mainstage concerts at venues including the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as educational initiatives throughout France. She also works regularly as a conductor, music director, and music department staff member at the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center in Evanston, Illinois. In summer 2026, she will join the Vienna Opera Academy as assistant conductor for its production of Carmen.

Beyond the podium, Selina 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 is pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at the Mannes School of Music in New York City.