Violin: Yura Lee
Yura Lee is a multifaceted musician, as a soloist and as a chamber musician, and one of the very few that is equally virtuosic on both violin and viola. Her career spans through various musical mediums: both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, captivating audiences with music from baroque to modern, and enjoying a career that spans almost three decades that takes her all over the world. She has performed with major orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She has given recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
At age 12, she became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by National Public Radio. She is the recipient of a 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant; she has received numerous other international prizes, including top prizes in the Mozart, Indianapolis, Hannover, Kreisler, Bashmet, and Paganini competitions. Yura Lee was the only first prize winner awarded across four categories at the 2013 ARD Competition in Germany. Her CD Mozart in Paris, with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award. As a chamber musician, she regularly takes part in the festivals of Seattle, Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, La Jolla, Caramoor, to name a few. Yura Lee is currently a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, as both violinist and violist; she is also a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society.
Yura Lee plays a fine Giovanni Grancino violin kindly loaned to her through the Beares International Violin Society by generous sponsors. For viola, she plays an instrument made in 2002 by Douglas Cox, who resides in Vermont. Yura Lee is a professor at the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music, holding the Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld Endowed Chair. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog Nugget.
