15-year-old San Francisco native Ethan Liao already played Carnegie Hall this year, and now he’s headed back to New York to Lincoln Center after his new composition won a top national prize. We’ve got a taste of his very notable sounds.

One of San Francisco’s brightest up-and-coming musical stars just performed in February at Carnegie Hall, and now he's heading back to New York, as the Jazz at Lincoln Center organization has awarded one of his original works as a national composition contest winner. Oh, and we should mention, this up-and-coming musical star is a high school freshman who's just 15 years old.

University High School freshman Ethan Liao recently won the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s national student composition and arranging contest that’s part of their upcoming Essentially Ellington high school jazz band competition and festival (May 7-11). So the young man is heading back to New York City, where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform his winning composition “By Candlelight,” and Liao will participate in a recording session of the number.

The song, “By Candlelight,” is seen above from his recent appearance on KRON4’s Live by the Bay (you can watch the full interview here). We’ve got another video below of Ethan Liao playing it on a full, proper piano, and we asked the SF native how he got invites to play at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center at such a young age.

"One of my first memories, and my first memory about music, is listening to my grandma sing opera in the car," Liao tells SFist. "She’s an amateur opera singer. And so she was practicing one of her songs in the car and absolutely belting it. That’s one of my first memories."

"I was exposed to a lot of classical music when I was pretty young. I didn't always love to hear it," he adds. "But looking back, I’m really, really glad that my parents brought me to performances, showed me what symphonies sounded like, and sometimes played for me on their instruments."

"Having that music around the house all the time did wonders for my development as a musician, and also later on," he says.

Liao started playing the piano at three years old, and had a classical piano teacher by the time he was five. But he developed a more intensive interest in composing music for a full band during his spare time in the pandemic (at a time when he was just ten years old).

“By that time I started dipping my toes into composition,” Liao tells us. “I realized how useful the piano can be as a composer. I didn’t really mean to compose my first piece, I was just improvising for a very long time, and I eventually came up with something that I thought was pretty good.”

"And when I brought it over to my teacher, he told me, ‘Ethan, I think you just composed something, you should try to write it down.'”

His award-winning composition “By Candlelight” played on a full piano can be seen above. “It was originally really daunting to write for so many instruments, especially instruments that I don’t play,” he admits. “When I entered that Jazz Ensemble at University High School, that was really eye-opening for me. Because I slowly started figuring out how the different families of instruments could interact.”

“It really was a process of elimination, during the writing and also during my time listening and participating as a player in the band, what really worked and what didn’t,” he tells us. “For anyone else who’s trying to compose for a big band, it’s not as scary as it sounds. It’s actually really fun. You have a lot of freedom, you can put in whatever notes you want.”

“If you try things and try things again, you’ll absolutely get to a product that I’m sure you’ll be happy with, And that’s the experience that I found.”

Now Liao is at University High School, the alma mater of comic Ali Wong and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie. “San Francisco University High School (UHS) has an amazing music program, especially for jazz musicians,” he says. “When I was considering schools, I knew I wanted to be in a place where I could be surrounded by people who loved both jazz and orchestral music."

“I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am now without every single one of the mentors that’s guided me,” Liao continues. “It would be impossible for anyone to be a musician without those teachers. I know there are a lot of people who are self-taught, but they still gain knowledge from somewhere.”

Ethan Liao has more to say about that in his recent KTVU appearance.

Most of us cannot go to Lincoln Center in May to hear the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform “By Candlelight.” But you can see Ethan Liao perform next Friday night, April 25, at Bayview’s Old Skool Cafe from 5:45 - 8:30 pm, with several other University High School music program students.

“I’m very fortunate to be able to play there with some of my fellow musicians from UHS,” he says. “If you want to listen to me and my fellow musicians play some pretty fun jazz music that we all enjoy playing, you should come to the Old Skool Cafe.”

Related: New Musical Inspired and Performed By Real Bay Area Teens to Premiere August 4 at ACT [SFist]

Image: Kateryna Li Khemmett, Laureate Gala performance, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, February 17, 2025