Hear the full "AAPI Classical Musicians of Interlochen" podcast feature by clicking or tapping "Listen" above.
This May, Classical IPR celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month on Classical IPR by featuring just some of the many AAPI artists of Interlochen who play significant roles in the classical music world.
The acclaimed Korean-American classical pianist Soyeon Kate Lee attended Interlochen Arts Academy in the 1990s.
From an account of her life in Dr. Mari Yoshihara's Musicians from a Different Shore: "Korean pianist Soyeon Lee comes from a transnational family and continues to straddle national borders. Born in Korea in 1979, she began taking piano lessons at age four, but piano was always something she did for fun, and never having had a piano at home, practicing was not an everyday project for her.
"She moved to the United States at age nine because her father was studying for a PhD in political science in West Virginia. When she was fourteen, her father finished his PhD, and the family prepared to move back to Korea...Around the same time, she entered a piano competition in Texas and met a teacher at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan who encouraged her to study there. And so when her family returned to Korea, she went to Interlochen for her senior year of high school."
Lee went on to earn her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at The Juilliard School and eventually won first prizes at the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition.
Today, she is a prolific concert and recording artist, giving premieres and commissioning works from contemporary composers such as Marc-Andre Hamelin, Gabriela Lena Frank, Texu Kim and Huang Ruo.
Fervent insistence meets textural inventiveness in "Divergence" for piano and speaker by the Chinese composer Huang Ruo, who recites a Chinese poem from the Song Dynasty accompanied by Soyeon Kate Lee. Listen to her luxuriously expressive sound in Huang Ruo's "Divergence."
In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee joined the faculty at The Juilliard School, and became the first woman of Asian descent on the piano faculty.
Lee is undoubtedly one of Interlochen's most accomplished alumni, and her impassioned expressiveness continues to grace concert halls and chamber music festivals nationwide.
Additional Resources
Yoshihara, Mari. "The Roots and Routes of Asian Musicians." Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music, Temple University Press, 2007, pp. 77.
