Soyeon Kate Lee
Biography
First prize winner of the prestigious 2010 Naumburg International Piano Competition, Korean- American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has already been hailed by The New York Times as a pianist with "a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style," while The Washington Post has lauded her for her "stunning command of the keyboard."
Ms. Lee’s 2013/14 season highlights include performances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Rose Studio, Kaplan Penthouse, as well as recitals in Boston’s Gardner Museum, Weill Recital Hall, and Steinway Society of the Bay Area. She tours as a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two with pianists Anne-Marie McDermott, Wu Han, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet at La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Columbus Chamber Music Society, and Drew University. An active Naxos recording artist, her third CD featuring Liszt opera transcriptions will be released this season and records two albums featuring the music of Scriabin.
Ms. Lee has been rapturously received as guest soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, symphony orchestras of Columbus, Bangor, Bozeman, Boca Raton, Wyoming, Bozeman, Cheyenne, Napa Valley, Scottsdale, Abilene, Naples, Santa Fe, and Shreveport in the United States; the Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra (South Korea), Ulsan Symphony Orchestra (South Korea), Orquesta de Valencia (Spain,) and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (Dominican Republic), including performances under the batons of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jahja Ling, Jorge Mester, and Otto-Werner Mueller.
Recent recital appearances include New York City programs at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Art's Alice Tully Hall, Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland's Severance Hall, the Ravinia Festival's "Rising Stars" series, Auditorio de Musica de Nacional in Madrid - part of a 13-city tour of Spain, tour of the Hawaiian Islands, Krannert Center, and Finland’s Maanta Music Festival.
Soyeon Kate Lee was featured on the January 2006 cover of SYMPHONY magazine's annual "Emerging Artists" issue and in the 2008 edition of Musical America's "More Thrills of Discovery." Her debut CD on the Naxos label, featuring sonatas of Scarlatti, was released in February 2007 to critical acclaim. KOCH International Classics (E1) released her second album in April 2009, for which she was awarded the 2009 Young Artist Award from the Classical Recording Foundation.
Ms. Lee earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees, and the Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she won every award granted to a pianist including the Rachmaninoff Concerto Competition, two consecutive Gina Bachauer Scholarship Competitions, Arthur Rubinstein Prize, Susan Rose Career Grant, and the William Petschek Piano Debut Award. Winner of the 2004 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, as well as the Second and Mozart prizes of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Bronze Medal of the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, she has worked with Ursula Oppens, Richard Goode, Robert McDonald, and Jerome Lowenthal. Ms. Lee is the co-founder and artistic director of Music by the Glass, a concert series dedicated to bringing together young professionals in New York City. In the fall of 2014, she joins the piano faculty of the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music as an assistant professor.
