Pei-Shan Lee

Piano, Collaborative Piano

Nomad Series: February 24; Festival Sessions 1 & 2: June 28 – August 9

Director, Collaborative Piano Program; Faculty, New England Conservatory

Pianist Pei-Shan Lee’s active concert career has taken her to the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher (David Geffen) and Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, and tours of France, Germany, Belgium, and Israel. Her many summer festival appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival, Caramoor Festival, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Chautauqua Institute, Music Academy of the West, Heifetz International Music Institute, the International Piano Festival in Spain, the International Piano Festival at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, ProQuartet in France, the Great Wall International Music Academy in China, the Formosa Chamber Music Festival in Taiwan, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine.

Since coming to the United States from Taiwan, Lee has appeared in concerts with the Ariel, Formosa, Harlem, Jupiter, and Szymanowski String Quartets, as well as with members of the Bavarian Radio, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, San Diego Symphony Orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is also a founding member of DC8, eight musicians sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles, dedicated to the commissioning and performance of new music.

A dedicated teacher and devoted to the development of the collaborative piano field, Lee joined the New England Conservatory faculty in 2009. Additionally, she created a new master’s degree in Collaborative Piano at California State University Northridge in 2013, and since 2015 she has been serving as director of the tuition-free Collaborative Piano Fellowship program at the Bowdoin International Music Festival.

In 2006, Lee was appointed pianist for Itzhak Perlman’s violin studio at the Perlman Music Program. Shortly thereafter, she joined the PMP faculty in the Sarasota Winter Residency, and travels regularly with the program to Israel for guest residencies. She was staff pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and served on the summer faculty of the Chautauqua School of Music and Meadowmount School for Strings.

In her hometown of Boston, she has performed at MIT, Boston Ballet, and in recitals with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She also works with the BSO’s guest conductors and soloists, and was the Boston pianist seen in rehearsal with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in her documentary “The Portrait.” Her live performances can also be heard on WQXR, WGBH, and WRCJ.

Her recent recording of the Strauss and Szymanowski Sonatas with violinist Grzegorz Kotow is available on the ArchiMusic label. Frequently invited to China and Taiwan for masterclasses and residencies, Lee’s doctoral thesis, The Collaborative Pianist: Balancing Roles in Partnership, has been translated into Chinese and is an important resource for music schools wishing to begin/develop a Collaborative Piano program.

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