Sammi Li is a third-year at Northwestern University studying journalism and piano performance. She was born in Illinois and began studying piano at 3 years of age with her father. Upon moving to New Jersey, she studied with her aunt, Yuhui Choris Li, for seven years before joining the Clarfield Studio at age 11.
Under the guidance of Mrs. Clarfield, Sammi participated in national and international competitions. She and her sister, Effie Li, won second place in the national division of the MTNA Senior Piano Duet competition. Sammi was also a second place winner of the Thousand Islands International Piano Competition, a winner of the National YoungArts Competition, a finalist in the Claudette Sorel Piano Competition, an honorable mention winner in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Hartford, CT, and a semi-finalist in the Kaufman Youth International Competition. Regionally, she won first place in the NJMTA Young Musicians Competition, the West Chester Annual Pre-Collegiate Piano Competition, the Piano Teachers Congress of New York Honors Program and the Greater Princeton Steinway Society Piano Scholarship Competition. Sammi has had the opportunity to perform at NJPAC, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center, Kaufman Center, and has appeared on WWFM’s Kids on Keys series.
Sammi continued following her passion for music after graduating high school in 2022 and returned to Illinois to study with Dr. Sylvia Wang at the Bienen School of Music. This past March, she and her studio performed the entirety of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2. Sammi has also enjoyed participating in weekly studio classes and taking classes in music theory, aural skills and music composition, among others. This Fall she is taking her music studies to Vienna, Austria for a semester of chamber, music history and musicology classes while completing her German minor. Sammi’s background in music has informed the ways she tells stories about artists as a journalism major and how she uses music as a narrative tool in multimedia content.
She is interested in lifestyle, culture and entertainment reporting and interned for New York Live, NBC New York’s daily lifestyle and entertainment show, this past summer. She helped field produce a news package at the Tony Awards’ red carpet while internally fangirling over her favorite Broadway shows, actors, directors and composers. She has also helped produce live segment interviews with Broadway stars Alex Newell, Bill Irwin (who is an alum of Mrs. Clarfield’s alma mater, Oberlin College!), and Andrew Barth Feldman, among others. Some of Sammi’s favorite field shoot experiences also include highlighting local tri-state businesses.