A native of Shenzhen, China, TianYi Li traveled to New York in his early teens to pursue his love of piano. Within six years, he had finished his high school and undergraduate curricula, graduating cum laude from New York University Steinhardt, where he worked with Eduardus Halim. He continued his studies at the Juilliard School, where he obtained his Master of Music degree in 2020 and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 2025 under the guidance of Jerome Lowenthal.

TianYi is a laureate of the 2017 Tbilisi and 2024 Xiamen International Piano Competitions, and regularly gives solo recitals in the United States and China. As a chamber musician, he has performed and premiered new music with the New Juilliard Ensemble and AXIOM in Alice Tully Hall and the Peter Jay Sharp Theater.  He has been a piano fellow at the Bowdoin International Piano Festival and a resident artist at the Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program in Sarasota.

A devoted pedagogue, TianYi is a Sight-Reading and Secondary Piano instructor at Juilliard, where he works with undergraduate and graduate students to hone their keyboard skills. He resides in Princeton, New Jersey with his family.