Remaining tickets will be available at the box office on the night of the performance at 6:45 pm.
Imagine being a young foreigner in a strange land, and remaining there to study piano while the rest of your family returns to your home country.
Imagine, 10 years later, not only surviving an automobile accident that could have cost your life or physical health, not to mention your chosen profession, but also having it become a turning point in your career.
Pianist Soyeon Lee has triumphed over these adversities and more. On Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., the gifted young artist who has been heralded by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard” and by the New York Times for her “huge, and richly varied sound,” will perform at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center. Her concert, part of the Hawaii Concert Society’s 50th season, will include music by Bartok, Schumann, Albeniz, and Franz Liszt.
Soyeon Lee started piano lessons in Korea at age 5. Then, at age 9, she came with her parents and sister to Morgantown, a small university town in West Virginia. There she felt lonely and very aware of being different.
“My English was bad and the other children constantly made fun of me, and so I retreated to my music,” Lee said in a recent interview. “We did not own a piano, but at the university I often sneaked into the music building’s practice rooms.” There, she was discovered by a member of the music faculty who offered her free lessons.
In 1994, her family returned to Korea, but Lee was allowed to stay behind and follow her own dreams.
“Looking back, it was the right decision for me,” she said, “even though I missed my parents terribly and they were heartbroken to leave me. But maybe that made me work harder on my academics and my musical advancement.”
Juilliard was next, and Lee spent eight years there, earning three degrees in music. She earned the artist diploma, won the Rachmaninoff Concerto Competition and two consecutive Gina Bachauer Scholarship Competitions.
But her successes did not all come easily. Just weeks before participating in the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2003, she was riding in a car that hydroplaned and went over a cliff. Miraculously, she survived.
“That was when my life actually started to change,” Lee said. It started the first morning that she was back home from the hospital. “I woke and I cried looking at the trees,” she said. “I know it sounds corny, but at that moment I was so thankful for everything.” Then she remembered music.
“I went to the piano and played a note,” Lee said, eyes filling with tears. “I think I might have played a C. And, and I started crying. Because the sound … you know?”
Lee decided she wanted to compete, even though her wounds were still healing and her doctors advised rest. For the remaining weeks, she practiced about five minutes at a time, the longest she could sit at the piano without feeling dizzy. And then she went to Cleveland and won the prestigious competition’s second prize.
“I played probably more wrong notes than right notes,” Lee says now. “But what I remember feeling was just so much gratitude for being able to play. I was in love with the music, in love beyond belief. And I think that spoke to the jury.”
Tickets are $15 general, $12 for seniors, $60 and over, and $7 for students and are available at the East Hawaii Cultural Center, Most Irresistible Shop, Book Gallery, and Music Exchange, and the UHH Performing Arts Center Box Office.
Remaining tickets will be available at the box office on the night of the performance at 6:45 pm.