Nathan Lee, first-prize winner in the 2016 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, will perform Thursday, March 7, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Lee is presented by UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, as part of its ArtPlay Parlor Series featuring Young Concert Artists. The performance will be in the intimate parlor of the ArtPlay house, 1006 19th St. South.
Lee, who lives just outside Seattle, Washington, began playing the piano at the age of 6 and made his orchestral debut at the age of 9. At 15, Lee won in the 2016 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and was also awarded no fewer than 14 special concert prizes, including the Embassy Series Prize in Washington, D.C., and Germany’s Usedom Music Festival Prize. He currently holds the Mortimer Levitt Piano Chair of Young Concert Artists.
On the program are Bach’s English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807; Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 6 in F major, Op. 10, No. 2; Lizst’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor, BWV 891; Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58; and Schulz-Evler’s Arabesques on Strauss’s “By the Beautiful Blue Danube.”
Tickets are $37, with $10 student tickets. Doors will open at 6 p.m. with a cash bar available. The performance is at 7 p.m. For tickets or more information, call 205-975-2787 or visit www.AlysStephens.org.
Lee’s engagements this season also include his Kennedy Center debut on the 39th Young Concert Artists Series, recitals at the University of Illinois’ Krannert Center, Rockefeller University, and as soloist with the Seattle Symphony in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5. Lee also participated in Musicfest Perugia in Italy and the Verbier Festival Academy in Switzerland.
Lee has already been heard with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on NPR’s “From the Top,” the Cleveland Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra, and he shared the stage with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lang Lang on the Seattle Symphony’s Gala Evening. He has given recitals in Korea, for Radio France, and in Perugia, Italy, where, to a sold-out audience, he performed in a “Three Generations Concert” featuring his instructor Sasha Starcevich, pianist, and his instructor Ilana Vered, pianist.
Among the special YCA prizes awarded to Lee are the Korean Concert Society Prize, which provides support for his Kennedy Center debut; the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize; the Harriman-Jewell Series Prize; the Saint Vincent College Concert Series Prize; and the Washington Performing Arts Prize.