The Tuesday event in Whitley Auditorium is part of the Adams Foundation Piano Series sponsored by the Times-News and Elon University.
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Tuesday, October 23
Soyeon Kate Lee
Invitation to the Dance
Whitley Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.
Program includes Scarlatti, Schumann, Albéniz and Liszt
Admission: $15 or Elon ID for reserved seating. Tickets are available at the Center for the Arts Box Office. Tickets will also be available at Whitley Auditorium on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
Korean American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee visits Elon University on Tuesday as the fall Adams Foundation Piano Series artist. The popular piano recital series is sponsored by the Times-News (Burlington) and Elon University.
When she signed with the Adams Foundation Series in 2011, Ms. Lee joined a spectacular register of young, international artists including Jon Nakamatsu, Awadagin Pratt, Frederic Chiu, and Ian Hobson all of whom performed recent solo recitals at Elon as well as other fine spaces in small towns around the United States. Now in its twelfth season, the Adams Foundation Piano Series continues to grace Whitley Auditorium and the greater Elon community with its fall and spring piano concerts.
Winner of the prestigious 2010 Naumburg International Piano Competition, Kate Lee has been hailed as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound” and “a stunning command of the keyboard.” Lee earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and the Artist Diploma, from The Juilliard School where she garnered every award granted to a pianist.
Omri Shimron previews her upcoming Elon program centered around the theme of dance:
“Each selection on her rich and colorful program is either in dance form, or strongly alludes to a well-known dance tradition. Lee begins with Scarlatti, whose harpsichord works from the late Baroque period (early 1700s) were infused with proud flamenco patterns and other indigenous dances. Lee continues with Robert Schumann’s “Dances of the League of David” (Davidsbündlertänze), a poignant and intimate cycle of short character-pieces, movingly revealing a tale of the composer’s forbidden love for his future wife, Clara. On the second half, Lee returns to Spain of the late 19th-century, but here with Albeniz’s full-blooded and luscious piano writing. In his Iberia suite Albeniz synthesizes the Romantic pianism of Chopin and others with progressive — for his time — ideas emanating from the Parisian avant-garde, and all this through a warm and appealing evocation of Spain’s folkloric countryside. The program concludes with Franz Liszt’s virtuosic and arresting paraphrase on a celebrated waltz from Charles Gounod’s grand opera, Faust.”