Jiaqi Shao is pursuing her BM in Organ Performance in the studio of Professor David Higgs. She was born in 1997 in Shanghai, China, and began studying piano at the age of four. Jiaqi received third prizes in the “Marshal” Shanghai Teenager Piano Competition (2007) in China, and second prize in the 16th Annual Music Open Competition in the United States (2008). She studied in the Music Middle School (affiliated with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music) from 2009-2015. Jiaqi has studied organ since 2011, and was the winner of the teenage group in the Second International Electronic Organ Competition in Beijing, China in 2011. At Eastman, Jiaqi performed in concerts on many occasions, including “Pipedreams Organ Concerts” in Rochester in April, 2016, and she received Eastman’s Gerald Barnes Award for Excellence in Pipe Organ in 2017. Jiaqi is the first-place winner of the 2017 AGO/Quimby Regional Competitions for Young Organists at Buffalo Chapter, and the first-place winner of the 2017 RCYO Regional Competition at the AGO Regional Convention in Montreal. Jiaqi was a VanDelinder Fellow at Christ Church Episcopal (Rochester, NY) from 2016 to 2017, and she currently works as an organist at Rochester Christian Reformed Church in Penfield, New York. Jiaqi also enjoys reading, traveling and improvising.