Liza Sobel’s compositions are often influenced by current social issues. Recent inspirations include anxiety and stress in today’s society, the negative impact of social media and its link with depression and suicide, and sexual assault. Liza’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space, Bang on a Can, Aldeburgh Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Brevard Music Institute, Bowdoin’s International Music Festival and nief-norf Summer Festival. This March, Liza will attend the Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn with orkest de ereprijs. Last summer, Liza attended both the Aspen Music Festival and Eighth Blackbird’s Creative Lab.
Performers that have played her music include: Spektral String Quartet; Cygnus Ensemble; Third Coast Percussion; Nouveau Classical Project; Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble; West Point Woodwind Quintet; New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra; Skyros String Quartet; Helix; Société de concerts de Montréal; and Joseph Lin, first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet.
Liza’s Requiem won the American Prize in the choral division and was a finalist in the BMI Young Composers Award. Her orchestra piece Tocsin was a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Award. Other awards Liza has won include a Fulbright scholarship, and Rutgers and Cornell’s endorsed candidate and/or finalist for the Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Keasbey scholarships.
Liza is a doctoral candidate in composition at Northwestern University. She teaches a broad spectrum of music courses at Northwestern, including Music Theory, Aural Skills, History of the Symphony, Intro to Music for non-majors, and Composition for non-majors. She previously studied at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross Conservatory (MA); Cornell University (BA with honors), and Manhattan School of Music. She currently studies composition with Hans Thomalla. Past composition teachers include: Steven Stucky, Richard Danielpour, Tarik O’Regan, Derek Bermel, Robert Aldridge, David Dzubay, Gerald Chenoweth, and Jay Alan Yim.
