L I J I E - the Music Maker

With performances on Fox 25 Boston and King 5’s New Day Show (Seattle), as well as shows at colleges, clubs, coffee shops, living rooms and street corners, in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Austin, London, Taipei, and China, Lijie followed her heart and chose music. She has also established herself as an exceptional songwriter: songs from her debut album Roam have received recognition at the 2004, 2005, and 2009 UK Songwriting Contest, and have been used in various indie films and documentaries.
At the age of five, Lijie moved from her home in China and flew across the ocean to the United States, where her parents pushed her to be the “perfect” student. They also enrolled her in piano lessons, not knowing they were planting the seed for her future dreams as an artist. Lijie wanted to make her parents happy, but always felt that life had a different calling for her.
After graduating college, Lijie moved to Los Angeles (to her parent’s dismay) and began playing every open-mic night she could find. At one of her first Hollywood open-mics, she became friends with drummer Curtis Byrd. While waitressing, she met Adam Schuman, who would turn out to be the main guitarist on her first album. The three began the recording process, and during this time, she was approached by an indie-label. Though she chose not to sign with the label, the label owners introduced her to Erik Colvin, who would become her trusted producer and friend. Together (musician friends and producer), they recorded her first album, titled Roam.
After living in San Francisco for two years, and then some much needed downtime at home with her family in Washington, she packed two suitcases and headed to music school, where she began writing and recording her sophomore album. In 2011, she released her fan-funded second album, the Music Maker. The Seattle Weekly blog writes that the Music Maker is an “…ambitious effort that demonstrates both her impressive vocal range and disciplined focus on her own ideas...”
"People ask me why I pursue music…I was not raised in an artistic family. My parents had me take piano lessons, but NEVER wanted me to be a musician. It was in college – making mistake after mistake – that I realized I was doing things I did not love, and was motivated by other people’s expectations, instead of listening to my own heart. And in order to own the person in the mirror, I had to completely change my life. I LOVE MUSIC. Music is everywhere, and in everything. It is the soundtrack of our lives. Music has saved me in incredibly profound ways...and my dream is to connect with people throughout the world via music. I want people to know that there is someone out there, singing their song." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.