Biography
Hong Kong pianist Elsa Lee has appeared in solo and chamber recitals in Australia, England, Hong Kong, Poland, and the United States. Her performance in Kraków, Poland was described as “...extraordinary, expressive, powerful, and vibrated the whole concert hall…” - Wiadomości24.pl (translated as News24.pl - Polish social information service founded in 2006). Elsa has performed as a keyboardist with Eastman Wind Ensemble, Eastman Wind Orchestra, Eastman Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Women’s Chorus, Sydney Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, and Gustav Mahler Orchestra. She was featured as a guest artist and faculty at the ArtsAhimsa Chamber Music Festival in Lenox, MA, as well as Music Angel Orchestra and True Colors Symphony in HK. Her solo performances have also been broadcast by Radio 4 Hong Kong.
Under the tutelage of Van Cliburn medalist Barry Snyder and conductors Brad Lubman, Mark Scatterday, and Neil Varon, Elsa earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music, with a minor in Instrumental Conducting. She was also awarded the Vaughan Scholarship from Eastman and worked as a graduate assistant in studio and orchestral accompanying. Elsa’s mentors include renowned pedagogues and performers Jean Barr, Lynn Blakeslee, Alan Harris, and Barry Snyder on chamber music, and Second Viennese School expert David Headlam on post-tonal music analysis. She has also performed in masterclasses and taken private lessons from sought-after pianists and pedagogues including Fabio Bidini, Dean Kramer, Jerome Rose, Victor Rosenbaum, Boris Slutsky, Melvyn Tan, Dina Yoffe, and Andrzej Jasiński (teacher of Krystian Zimerman), who described her as a "remarkably intelligent pianist". As a conductor, Elsa has also conducted the University of Oregon Symphony Orchestra and the Navy Chamber Winds at the University of Oregon Summer Conducting Institute.
Aside from performing, Elsa is also a dedicated educator. She earned a Master of Education degree from Columbia University. She has taught students from diverse backgrounds and levels since 2001, and she was an instructor of applied piano lessons at Teachers College of Columbia University and Rutgers University Extension Division. Elsa is also an active presenter at music education conferences. Her research project on bridging atonal music theory analysis and performance using animation was presented at the 61st College Music Society National Conference and the Music and the Moving Image Conference at the NYU Steinhardt School. Her lecture-recital on “Understanding Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11 through a visual approach” received the Diane W. Follet Best Presentation Prize, awarded by the College Music Society Northeast Chapter. As an advocate of integrative, creative, and collaborative learning, Elsa was selected as one of the five Yamaha Graduate Fellows to work closely with deans and music faculty from across the United States at the Eastman Music Leadership Conference in 2017, where topics related to the future of music education and curricula were widely discussed. Elsa was also nominated and elected as the Board Member for Performance to serve the College Music Society Northeast Chapter from 2018-2020. Relocated back to Hong Kong in the fall of 2019, Elsa serves as the Expert Member of the Music Pre-screening Panel (Keyboard) of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund. She is currently a lecturer and on the piano faculty of the Hong Kong Baptist University. She also holds other teaching positions at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the HKU SPACE. The courses she has taught include Advanced Performance Studies (Piano), Advanced Performance Technique and Performance Practice (Piano), Music Pedagogy, Pedagogy Workshop, Instrumental Pedagogy, Critical Practices in Music Pedagogy, Romantic Style and Performance, Performance, Practice & Critics: Romantic Period, and Studies in Piano Literature.
