Noël LEE, American composer and pianist, received his early musical education in Lafayette, Indiana. After studying at Harvard University (with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Tillman Merritt) - interrupted by thirty-eight months of military service during World War II - and at the New England Conservatory of Music, he went to Paris to continue his education under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger. She has written: “Noël Lee is one of the finest musicians I have met. Composer with a real personality, he has refinement and strength, an acute perception of the resources of his instrument, a sense of the hierarchy of values and a total understanding of the works.”
Among the many awards he received in early years -to name two of these: the Lili Boulanger Composition Prize and a prize in the Young Composers' Contest of the Louisville Orchestra - the one from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1959), in recognition of his creative work in general, is of particular interest. In recent years the Cultural Affairs Ministry in France and the French National Radio have given him three important commissions - an unusual distinction for a composer not of French nationality. In 1986, a second prize in the Arthur Honegger Composition Contest for a set of Piano Etudes (the first prize went to György Ligeti) and in 1991, the Charles Oulmont Prize were awarded him by the Foundation of France. Aaron Copland has written: “Here is a composer who writes his music with his eyes wide open, and with a kind of cool intensity that defines his personality... Music to him is a natural langage, a language he uses without strain or mannerism. ...no matter how complex the textures may be, the musical discourse is always lucid and reasoned.”
Lee's career as concert pianist has led him on tour on six continents. In Europe he has recorded 185 LPs and CDs since 1955, of which 13 have received a Grand Prix du Disque. This recorded repertory - from J. S. Bach to Jean Barraqué - comprises the first complete recording of all the Schubert Piano Sonatas, including several unfinished ones which Lee has completed, the entire piano literature of Debussy and Ravel, and numerous works of twentieth century giants - Charles Ives, Charles Griffes, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter. More than 20 discs are devoted to four-hand and two-piano compositions of various periods in collaboration with Christian Ivaldi. In addition, his large repertoire includes 30 Concerti and embraces a sizable portion of 19th and 20th-century chamber and vocal music, particularly that of France.
In the United States Lee has been visiting professor at Brandeis and Cornell Universities and at Dartmouth College. In Europe he is frequently called upon to give workshops in piano, in chamber music, in vocal literature, and collaborates extensively with publishing houses for new editions of French piano, four-hand, and two-piano music.
Web: http://www.amc.net/member/Noel_Lee/home.html