First-prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by the New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style.”

Highlights of recent seasons include appearances at the National Gallery, Library of Congress, Gina Bachauer Concerts, Purdue Convocations, Music@Menlo, San Francisco Performances, Camerata Pacifica tour, Chamber Music Chicago, and the Cleveland Art Museum. She was a member of CMS’s Bowers Program, and is a regular participant in numerous chamber music festivals including the Great Lakes, Santa Fe, and Music Mountain Chamber Music Festivals.

She has commissioned works by prominent composers and has given world premieres of works written by Frederic Rzewski, Paola Prestini, Marc-André Hamelin, Alexander Goehr, Gabriela Lena Frank, Texu Kim, and Huang Ruo.

A second prize and Mozart Prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and a laureate of the Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, she is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award upon graduation, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her major mentors and teachers have been Richard Goode, Julian Martin, Robert McDonald, Jerome Lowenthal, and Ursula Oppens.

In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee joined the piano faculty at the Juilliard School, and serves on the piano faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival during the summers.