Sean Lee, Violinist

Selected from nearly 300 international participants, violinist Sean Lee was recently awarded the 2nd Prize of the 2008 Young Concert Artists, Inc. International Auditions. Also the winner of 3rd Prize at the 52nd “Premio Paganini” International Violin Competition in 2008, Lee has been performing throughout the United States as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician.

Lee was selected in December 2007 to participate in a weeklong workshop at Carnegie Hall with pianist Emanuel Ax, conductor David Zinman, and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman which concluded with a public masterclass and performance. As a recitalist, he has performed at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in New Jersey, on the Sundays Live series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and on the Artists Ascending series in Memphis, Tennessee. He has also appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras including the Orchestra Del Teatro Carlo Felice, Westchester Symphony, Peninsula Symphony, Torrance Symphony, and Redlands Symphony. A recipient of many awards, Lee was one of 130 artists selected from 6,500 applicants by the National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts to attend the 2005 youngARTS Awards, and received the 2005 Emerging Young Artist Award in Music from the California Alliance for Arts Education.

An equally active chamber musician, Lee performs regularly with the LK String Quartet, which was praised by The New York Times as “…fiery and propulsive, with striking unanimity…” for its New York debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March 2008. He has also recently collaborated in chamber music performances with violinist Miriam Fried at Ravinia Festival, cellist Ronald Leonard and pianist/composer Lukas Foss at Festival of the Hamptons, and with other distinguished artists including Vivian Weilerstein, Paul Katz, and Itzhak Perlman.

Lee has led the Juilliard Orchestra as concertmaster under the batons of David Atherton, James DePriest, Xian Zhang, and David Robertson for performances at venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Shanghai Grand Theatre, and Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts. Lee also performs regularly with the Perlman Music Program String Orchestra with Itzhak Perlman conducting.

In recent summers Lee has appeared at Music@Menlo, Sarasota Music Festival, and Ravinia Music Festival. He is a faculty member with the LK String Quartet at the summer educational program Chamber Music at the Rockies, and also performed, taught, and conducted at the Montecito Summer Music Festival's inaugural season. He also attended ENCORE School for Strings for three summers under the Hudson Community Scholarship, and has studied for the past six years as a student of the Perlman Music Program.

Now twenty-one years old, Lee holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Juilliard School in New York City, and is continuing his studies at the Juilliard School for a Master of Music Degree as a recipient of the Dorothy Delay Scholarship and Dorothy Starling Scholarship. He currently studies with the internationally acclaimed Itzhak Perlman, and has studied in the past with renowned violin professor Robert Lipsett and legendary violinist Ruggiero Ricci.