CCM Adds Naumburg Competition Winner Soyeon Kate Lee to Piano Faculty

CCM welcomes Assistant Professor of Music in Piano Soyeon Kate Lee to its faculty. Her appointment begins in August of 2014.

Dean Peter Landgren today announced the appointment of pianist Soyeon Kate Lee to the faculty of CCM’s Department of Piano. First prize winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Piano Competition in 2010, Lee has 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.”

Lee joins CCM as Assistant Professor of Music in Piano beginning in August of 2014. Her appointment gives CCM the rare distinction of having two Naumburg Piano Competition winners on faculty (CCM Piano Department Chair Awadagin Pratt also took first prize in 1992).

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.

An active Naxos recording artist, her third CD featuring Liszt opera transcriptions was released earlier this year and she will return to the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto for a two-CD recording of Scriabin’s piano works in April.

CCM’s Sandra Rivers Performs at Steinway Hall This Thursday

Photography by Jay Yocis.

Professor of Collaborative Piano Sandra Rivers continues CCM’s 2010-11 Steinway Hall Series of Concerts this Thursday, Dec. 9. Her program will include Beethoven’s Sonata Op.54 in F Major, Chopin’s Ballade in A-flat Major; Rachmaninoff’s Etudes Tableaux Op. 39 Nos. 8 and 9 and Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes. The concert is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at Steinway Hall, 109 West 57th Street in New York City. The CCM Steinway Hall Series is open to the general public, but seating is limited. The next installment of this concert series will occur on Thursday, Jan. 13 and will feature Hitomi Koyama, a doctoral student of Elisabeth and Eugene Pridonoff.