American composer and pianist Jon Liechty was born in Goshen, Indiana in 1964. At age thirteen he wrote a number of short piano pieces, which were performed at the Goshen College Piano Teachers Workshop, where he gave a lecture-demonstration on aleatory compositional techniques. Soon after, the string orchestra at a local junior high school premiered one of his pieces.
Liechty's compositions have been performed in New York’s Weill Hall, at An Die Musik Live! in Baltimore, at the Midwest Composer's Symposium in Oberlin, Ohio, at the Indiana Contemporary Music Festival in Terre Haute, Indiana, at the Sound in the Land festival in Waterloo, Ontario, and at the Escuela Nacional de Música in Mexico City. He is the recipient of grants from Meet the Composer and the Indiana University Honors Division.
Azerbaijani music has been a major focus of Jon Liechty's attention for many years; music by Azerbaijani composers and traditional Azerbaijani pieces are frequent elements of his concert programs, along with music by living American composers and the traditional Western Classical repertoire.
An active lecturer and presenter, Liechty has spoken about Azerbaijani music at the Asian and Central European Studies Conference at Indiana University, at the Greater Hartford Academy for the Performing Arts, and about Western classical music at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and the New York Chapter of the World Literature Center.
Baku, Azerbaijan, London, Brussels, New York, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Vancouver, and Atlanta are a few of the places Liechty has appeared as a pianist. A founding member of the Sabá Ensemble, he is heard on the CD, Sabá, Breeze of thes East. This talented performer has appeared at the SummerKeys festival in Maine, at the Lotus World Music and Dance Festival in Indiana, at the American Composers Alliance festival in New York City, and at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, where he is Assistant Music Director. Recently he gave the world premiere performance of Andrew Nishikawa's Piano Concerto No. 1, written especially for him, atthe Boston Conservatory. He has been interviewed by the Voice of America, and by WFIU radio in Indiana. An article describing his work has appeared in Azerbaijan International.
Jon Liechty is a graduate (BM 1988, MM 1996) of the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, where his teachers included Donald Erb, Eugene O'Brien, Claude Baker, and Don Freund.