Sonia Lee, Harpsichordist & Early Music Scholar
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Maintaining an active concert schedule in North and South Americas, Europe, and the Far East, award-winning Canadian early keyboardist Sonia Lee has been praised by critics for her "very high standard of playing" and her ability "to dazzle an enraptured audience." She has been heard as soloist at festivals as well as regional and international conferences, including Boston Early Music Festival, Rome Festival, Early Keyboard Music Cycle of Buenos Aires, Early Music Colorado Fall Festival, Society for Historically Informed Performance Summer Concert Series, as well as the American Musical Instrument Society, Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society, Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, Galpin Society, and International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections meetings. As a continuo player on both harpsichord and organ, she has collaborated with numerous soloists and ensembles, including Concerto Urbano, La Donna Musicale, the Rome Festival Orchestra and Opera, Dulces Exuviae, Sinfonia da Camera, Les Jeunes Virtuoses de Montréal, and Musicerend Gezelschap, of which she is a founding member.
Sonia Lee's performances have been broadcast on Harmonia/WFIU, WGBH, WILL-FM, RTHK, and CBC/ Radio Canada. Featuring the Seven Psalms of David by Antonia Bembo as well as harpsichord and instrumental works by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, her 2005 CD recording with La Donna Musicale was awarded four stars by Goldberg Magazine. An advocate of contemporary harpsichord music, she has
performed works by such prize-winning composers as Dagmar Feyen, James Dorsa, Asako Hirabayashi, and Luis Mucillo, and for concerts organized by Aliénor. Her recent and upcoming performing projects include CD recordings of the complete keyboard works of Charles Demars and Charles-Alexandre Jollage, as well as
concert appearances in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Berlin, Stockholm, Vancouver, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
As a musicologist, she has been devoted to a large-scale research project on rediscovered two-keyboard arrangements of compositions of several eighteenth-century composers, including George Frederic Handel, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, and Johann Christoph Kellner. Collaborating with Michael Tsalka, she is preparing modern editions and recordings, and has delivered modern première performances of these unpublished works. She has contributed biographical articles on Wanda Landowska, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Jean-Pierre Rampal, August Wenzinger, and Lauritz Melchior in the newly published encyclopedia Musicians and Composers of the 20th Century (Salem Press, 2009), and is currently expanding her Doctor of Musical Arts and Library Science Dissertation, The Harpsichord: A Research and Information Guide, in preparation of the publication of her reference book in 2011.
Sonia Lee has won numerous prizes and grants, including top prize in the 2007 Montréal Baroque Galaxie-CBC Rising Star Competition, Jurow Prize in the 2007 Mae & Irving Jurow International Harpsichord Competition, and the 2006 William E. Gribbon Memorial Award sponsored by the American Musical Instrument Society. A Fellow of Trinity College London, she completed her undergraduate and master's studies at McGill University in Montréal, and was awarded fellowships to pursue two doctoral degrees in Early Keyboard Performance and Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with concurrent studies in Library and Information Science. Her major performance teachers have included Charlotte Mattax, Hank Knox, Luc Beauséjour, and Joyce Lindorff, and she has received additional coaching from Kenneth Gilbert. She is a past Thesis and Dissertation Reviewer for the School of Music at the University of Illinois, where she has also taught harpsichord and music history, and directed the Collegium Musicum. Currently, she is on the Visiting Music History Faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University, and serves on the Board of Directors and as Newsletter Editor for the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society.
Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707)
Toccata in G Major, BuxWV 164
Gaspard Le Roux (d. 1707)
Prelude in F Major
Chacone in F Major
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude in Eb major for Lute or Harpsichord, BWV 998
Antoine Forqueray (1672-1745)
La Leclair
Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667)
Lamentation faite sur la mort très douloureuse de Sa Majesté Impériale, Ferdinand le troisième (1657)
Charles Demars (1702-1774)
Prelude in A Major
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Excerpt from Armide
Sonia Lee, harpsichord
Antonio Bembo (c.1643-c.1715)
Ha, que labsence est un cruel martire
Lissette Jimenez, soprano
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Adagio Molto
From Concerto No. 3 in F major, Op. 8, RV 293, "L'autunno"
Sonia Lee, harpsichord (lute stop)
George Friedrich Händel (1685-1759)
Glory and worship hast thou laid upon him
From The King Shall Rejoice, Coronation Anthem HWV 260
Excerpt from Miserere mei Deus
Sonia Lee, organ
Dagmar Feyen (Belgium, b.1967)
Evolutions: 6 Preludes on the Evolutions from "L'Art de toucher le clavecin" for Harpsichord (2007)
* Prizewinner at the 2008 Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competition
I. Progrès de tièrces en montant et en descendant
II. Progrès de quartes en montant et en descendant
III. Progrès de quintes en montant et en descendant
IV. Progrès de sixiemes en montant et en descendant
V. Progrès de septiemes en montant et en descendant
VI. Progrès de d'Octaves. Fuga a tre voci - Tempo di Giga
Asako Hirabayashi(USA, b. 1960)
Sonatina II for Harpsichord Solo (2003)
* First Prize Winner at the 2004 Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competition
Robert L. Bocchino Jr. (USA, b. 1971)
Allemande for Harpsichord (2009)
Dedicated to Sonia Lee
Goldberg Variation No. 12
Goldberg Variation No. 24
Goldberg Variation No. 9
Goldberg Variations: Aria da capo
"Sonia's concert of D'Anglebert and Frescobaldi was a big success..."
"They loved the music."
- Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society Newsletter, USA
"[A] soloist who acquitted herself admirably in her performance..."
"Lee was held to a very high standard of playing."
- Culture, McGill Daily, Canada
"Special guest harpsichordist Sonia Lee gave a brilliant performance to an enraptured audience."
- Early Music Colorado Quarterly, USA
"Ms. Lee upheld the high standard of performing that Italian music lovers, tourists, and critics have come to expect from the Rome Festival."
- Fritz Maraffi, Director of the Rome Festival Orchestra & Opera, Italy
"Instruments by Klinkhamer & Partners, Paul Irvin, Norman Sheppard, David Sutherland and Knight Vernon... were ably played by Sonia Lee."
- Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society Newsletter, USA
"... Dagmar Feyen's cerebral 'Evolutions,' livened by Sonia Lee's imaginative articulation."
- Aliénor News & Notes, USA
"She used Vernon's French double and the program included Buxtehude and a surprisingly interesting work by Nicolas Lebègue. Lee appears already as a polished performer in spite of her young age. She very ably demonstrated instruments during the previous MHKS meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, last year."
For booking and other inquiries, please email:
sonialeemusic_gmail.com
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