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"Kaju Lee delivered this rapid and brilliant music with skill and aplomb. Her performance was delicate and it was much to the taste of the audience, and she and the orchestra were given prolonged applause at the end."
– ArtSMart music magazine states after performing Mozart Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat major, K.271 with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra in Durban, South Africa —
Pianist Kaju Lee has performed in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and throughout the United States. Her performances have been broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Radio Korea (Seattle, Washington), WRGC (NPR in Milledgeville, Georgia), and the Busan Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation in South Korea. As a collaborator, she is noted for her sensitive playing, colorful timbres, expressive tone, and her ability to “blend the sound and make music together” with other fine musicians.
Currently, Dr. Lee is Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy and Collaborative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she oversees the piano/keyboard area and teaches Applied Piano, Class Piano, Piano Pedagogy, and Collaborative Piano. She is also on the piano faculty at the prestigious Interlochen Summer Arts Camp. She has taught and/or collaborated at Georgia College (Milledgeville, Georgia), Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, Texas), the Texas Young Artists Competition, the Patti and Allan Herbert Frost School of Music Program (Salzburg, Austria), the Choral Symphony Society in New York City, and the Pre-College Division of the Manhattan School of Music. She has also adjudicated for several music competitions, including the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities Piano Competition, the South Carolina Music Teachers Association, the Houston Music Teachers Association, the Nacogdoches Sonatina Festival (Texas), the Conroe Music Teachers Association (Texas), the Cypress Creek Music Teachers Association (Texas), the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Piano Competition (Georgia), and the Bridging the Gap Music Festival and Competition in the Philippines.
Lee earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano at the University of Colorado – Boulder, where she studied with internationally-renowned teacher Anne Epperson and completed a dissertation titled “The Art of Collaborative Piano: Becoming a Complete Collaborative Artist." She also holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, McGill University in Montréal and Hanyang University (Seoul, South Korea). Her continuing education includes Fellowships to the Music Academy of the West and the Orford Music Festival.
Her teachers and coaches include internationally-known musicians and pedagogues Dale Bartlett, Mary Dibbern, Raymond Beegle, Maestro Nicholas Carthy, Gregory Chaverdian, Jonathan Feldman, Vladimir Feltsman, Leonard Hokanson, Michael McMahon, Mutsumi Moteki, Heasook Rhee, Wolfram Rieger, Gait Sirguey, Robert Spillman, and the Takács String Quartet.
Dr. Lee performs in a duo with New Zealander cellist Emily Duffill; under the name Duo Élément, they have presented concerts to critical acclaim in the United States, Asia, and Australia. Their CD, 100 Years of Music for Cello and Piano, is available for purchase at iTunes, Amazon, and cdbaby.com.
Her recent engagements include a tour with Bronwen Forbay (soprano), Jamie Van Eyck (mezzo-soprano), Randy Umstead (tenor), and Christian Bester (baritone). The tour included concerts at Baylor University, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (Belton, Texas), the University of South Africa, Stellenbosch University (Stellenbosch, South Africa), the Grahamstown National Arts Festival (Makhanda, South Africa), and the Friends of Music Society, South Africa.
Lee has performed the Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 9 in E flat Major, K. 271, with South Africa's premier orchestra, the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, in Durban City Hall in South Africa. The classical magazine ArtSMart, a news website covering the arts in Durban and the surrounding areas in South Africa, stated of this performance:
“Kaju Lee, who now lives and teaches in the USA, is a slight and unassuming figure on stage, but she delivered this rapid and brilliant music with skill and aplomb. Her performance was delicate and it was much to the taste of the audience, and she and the orchestra were given prolonged applause at the end."
