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Biography

Korean-American Violinist Kristin Lee has been praised by The Strad for her “rare stylistic aptness” and “mastery of tone and rare mood in a performer of any age.” A violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique, Ms. Lee enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, a chamber musician, and is equally noted for her growing reputation in collaborations with various genres of music.

Winner of 2010 Astral Artists Auditions and 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, Ms. Lee has appeared as soloist with St. Louis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony, Albany Symphony, the Ural Philharmonic of Russia, the Korean Broadcasting Symphony of Korea, and many more. She has appeared on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, the Louvre Museum in Paris, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. She has been featured on the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Stars Series, and has toured throughout northern Italy. In April 2012, Ms. Lee organized a memorial concert at Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center for the victims of the Oikos University shooting which occurred in Oakland, California.

Upcoming engagements include concerto appearances with the Colgate University Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony, Massapequa Symphony, Temple University Symphony, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; recitals for the Strathmore Series and Philadelphia’s Morning Musicales; chamber music performances throughout New York, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and tours of the U.S. and Korea with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Ms. Lee is also curating a solo recital at New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge for the spring of 2014 in which she is commissioning composer/performers to write music for the violin and steelpan, guitar, theremin, carnatic South Indian singing, and more.

Since her performance at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts with drummer and DJ ?uestlove in April 2011 at the Verizon Hall of Kimmel Center titled Paris-Philly Lockdown, Ms. Lee has enjoyed a continued collaboration with the drummer and frontman for the Grammy Award-winning band, The Roots. She appears on The Roots’ most recent CD Undun, and appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in ?uestlove’s experimental project called Shuffle Culture, which brought together musicians such as Deerhoof, D.D.Jackson, Rahzel, DJ Jeremy Ellis, evoking iPod's Shuffle mode into a live performance.

An accomplished chamber musician, Ms. Lee is a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center after completing her 3 year residency as a CMS Two artist. She has appeared in chamber music festivals, such as the Ravinia Festival, Music@Menlo, the Perlman Music Program, Festival Mozaic, Medellin Festicamara of Colombia, and at the Sarasota Music Festival. She is also the concertmaster of the ground-breaking Metropolis Ensemble, with whom she premiered Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto written for Ms. Lee, and which was released for the Naxos label CD titled Dreamscapes in September 2012.

Ms. Lee’s performances have been broadcast on WQXR in New York, on Bob Sherman’s “Young Artists Showcase,” and with guitarist Mattias Jacobsson on Annie Bergen’s “The Office Hours.” Other broadcasts include PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center,” the Kennedy Center Honors, and a guest artist performance on WFMT Chicago’s Rising Stars series. She also appeared on a nationally broadcast PBS documentary entitled PBS in Shanghai, which chronicled a historic cross-cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory.

Ms. Lee has received many honors, including Second Prize in the 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School – in the Pre-College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007.

Born in Seoul, Ms. Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman, after he heard her perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Donald Weilerstein, and served as an assistant teacher for Mr. Perlman’s studio as a Starling Fellow. She is on faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and serves on faculty at Music@Menlo Festival in the summers.

Booking Information

Astral Artists

230 South Broad Street
Ste 300
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Tel:   215-735-6999
Fax:  215-735-6856
Web: astralartists.com

Vera Wilson, President

Tel:     215-735-6283
E-mail: vera@astralartists.org

Links

Music@Menlo
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Astral Artists
Metropolis Ensemble
The Juilliard School
Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY Queens College

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Acclaim

• “Violinist Kristin Lee’s local recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium was a splendid first appearance.
  This 19-year-old student of Itzhak Perlman at the Juilliard School plays with essentially perfect intonation and rare stylistic aptness…
  she began with a tonally sparkling, vivacious account of Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major, Op. 30, No. 3…
  [Chausson’s Poème, Op. 23] was performed with a mastery of tone and mood rare in a performer of any age.
  Wieniawski’s Polonaise Brillante in D Major, Op. 4, No. 1 had a delightful swagger…” –The Strad

  “It’s not often that one attends a concert and hears a young virtuoso – not in the making, but fully realized – as a master. Violinist Kristin Lee was simply spectacular…This is a violinist who has everything: superlative technique to burn, interpretative mastery and incredible sensitivity to the various styles of music she performed. Lee was in full possession of the skills required to colorize the violin tone to create the widest possible gamut of expression, from perfectly tuned harmonics to the most intensely vigorous, but never strident, playing. Listening to her, I was reminded of the young Isaac Stern.
  In a word, the recital was flawless. This is a violinist with a brilliant future.” – Stephen Dankner, The Advocate (Berkshire County, Massachusetts)

  “[Kristin Lee’s] technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity well beyond her 17 years. The way she worked into an entrance or picked up a theme from the orchestra was miraculous…” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Lee met the challenges [of Brahms’ Violin Concerto] head-on with her already formidable talent. With flair and passion, she sang us an intensely lyric poem of epic proportion…It was a performance of the first caliber. –Albuquerque Journal

  “…violinist Kristin Lee…was operating on such a high level that the music carried the day.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

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