Piano Recital with Soyeon Kate Lee & Ran Dank

BIOGRAPHY

Soyeon Kate Lee
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 2012/13 season highlights include performances at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Rose Studio, and the Kaplan Penthouse, as well as Boston’s Gardner Museum as a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two. She collaborates this season with Daedalus and Brentano String Quartets, violinist Ani Kavafian, cellist Timothy Eddy, and members of the Chiara String Quartet, among others, and appears in recital at the Rhode Island College Performing Arts Series, Elon University, Pittsburg State University, Portland Ovation Series, Ridotto Music Festival, Music Mountain, and Sheldon Friends of Chamber Music.

In celebration of Benjamin Britten’s centennial, Ms. Lee performs the less traversed Britten Piano Concerto with the Adelphi University Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee. An active Naxos recording artist, her third CD featuring Liszt opera transcriptions will be released this season and she will return to the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto for a two-CD recording of Scriabin’s piano works in April.

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 Arts’ 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 extensively with Robert McDonald and Jerome Lowenthal at Juilliard, and is currently pursuing her Doctoral studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with Ursula Oppens and Richard Goode. Ms. Lee is a Steinway Artist.

Ran Dank
Pianist Ran Dank deploys his brilliant technique with astonishing energy, intellect, and intensity, captivating audiences and critics alike. In the past season of New York concerts alone, he has performed Beethoven sonatas at Merkin Hall, Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in his debut with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall, and gained critical acclaim for his “vivacious playing” (The New York Times) of the Tobias Picker Concerto at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre and for his performance of Ravel’s piano trio at the Chelsea Music Festival for “the sweep and fire of his playing” (The New York Times).

Current season highlights include a recital debut at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and appearances at Portland Ovations, Merrick-Bellmore Community Concert Association, Missouri State University, Tannery Pond Concerts, the University at Buffalo, and Pro Arte Musical in Puerto Rico. Dank also performs in the inaugural season of the Young Concert Artists ensemble miXt, with performances at New York City’s Merkin Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and elsewhere in the U.S.

Mr. Dank has appeared as soloist with the Phoenix, Ann Arbor, Hilton Head, and Pensacola symphonies, the Cleveland Orchestra as a laureate of the Cleveland International Competition, as well as the Orquesta de Valencia in Spain, among others; he has been presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society’s prestigious Hayes Piano Series at the Kennedy Center, the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Finland’s Mänttä Festival (his all-Liszt recital was broadcast on Finnish National Radio); and performed as a chamber musician at YCA’s Tokyo Festival and the Seattle and Montreal chamber music festivals. Recipient of the Sander Buchman Memorial First Prize of the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Dank made his New York debut in the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Concert. At the Auditions, he was also honored with the John Browning Memorial Prize, the Slomovic Orchestra Soloist Prize, the Albany Symphony Prize, the Embassy Series Prize for a concert in Washington D.C., and the Saint Vincent College Bronder Prize for Piano.

In his native Israel, Mr. Dank has been invited as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Jerusalem, Rishon Lezion, Haifa, and Raanana, as well as the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, and most recently, at the Israel Conservatory of Music in a recital celebrating Debussy’s 150th anniversary.

In addition to First Prize at the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Mr. Dank is a laureate of the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Sydney International Piano Competition. Mr. Dank is the recipient of grants from the Arthur Foundation and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

Mr. Dank earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University, where he studied with Emanuel Krasovsky, and received his Master’s degree from the Juilliard School where he worked with Emanuel Ax and Joseph Kalichstein and Juilliard’s Artist Diploma, under Robert McDonald. He is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Arts with Ursula Oppens and Richard Goode at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as a chancellor’s fellow.