Lee’s School Of Music To Host Virtual Collab Music Day

Lee University School of Music will host Virtual LeeU Collab Music on Saturday, Sept. 19. The event will be hosted over Zoom with Dr. ChoEun Lee, assistant professor of collaborative piano and vocal coaching at Lee, as the event director.

LeeU Collab Music is a day-long workshop focusing on musical collaboration. It aims to guide all musicians (vocalists, instrumentalists, and pianists) to enrich their knowledge related to the collaborative arts field and to become successful collaborators in making music together. LeeU Collab Music invites pre-collegiate (high school), collegiate students, and teaching professionals.

“The mission is to provide an enriching environment with distinguished guest speakers joining Lee SOM faculty in lectures, master classes, panel discussions, and concerts on a variety of topics essential to the collaborative arts field,” says Dr. Lee. “Collaboration is a crucial activity for making quality music, and it promotes intimate teamwork.”

The event will begin with a lecture on "Music Learning and the Brain: Effective Learning Strategies for Musicians," by Dr. Ana María Otamendi, director and coordinator of the collaborative piano program at Louisiana State University and artistic director of the collaborative piano institute.

The remainder of the event will feature Lee University School of Music faculty, including a live interview with Dr. Gloria Chien on chamber music experience, a vocal-piano masterclass with Lee, a workshop on sight-reading and sight-singing with Dr. Chery Brendel, and a discussion on "Playing and Singing in the Choir" with Dr. William Green.

Dr. Chien has been picked by the Boston Globe as one of the superior pianists of the year, “… who appears to excel in everything.” She is an avid chamber musician and currently serves as artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and the String Theory at the Hunter Chamber Series in Chattanooga. She is a Steinway artist and an artist-in-residence at Lee.

Dr. Brendel joined the School of Music faculty full-time this fall but has been teaching at Lee since 2005. She has performed opera, recital, and oratorio in the United States, as well as Germany and Italy.

Dr. Green serves as dean of Lee’s School of Music, a professor of choral music, and directs the Lee University Chorale. He has collaborated with many of today’s leading conductors and has led performances of many of the major works for chorus and orchestra.

Dr. Lee has worked extensively in recitals and masterclasses with renowned musicians, including Stephanie Blythe, Martin Katz, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Christine Schäfer. She was named a recipient of the Grace B. Jackson Prize and of the Gwendolyn Koldofsky Keyboard Collaborative Arts scholarship four times.

“Mastering collaboration skills requires years of experience, but early exposure to the knowledge and training can develop a solid foundation for building a natural sense of acute listening, physical flexibility, and music comprehension ability, which is vital both in collaboration and music learning in general,” said Dr. Lee.

Online registration is $25 and is available on leeucollabmusic.com until Saturday.

For registration after the submission deadline or for more information, please email collabmusic@leeuniversity.edu.