Chamber Music in the Atrium with Piano Cleveland: Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee

The Cleveland Museum of Art partners with Piano Cleveland to present this spring’s Chamber Music in the Atrium lunchtime concert series, which occurs on February 24, March 24, April 21, and May 12 at 12:00 p.m. Each performer presents a captivating piano performance and provides background on the works performed. 

Ran Dank has a storied career with roots in his fourth-prize win at the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Two years later, Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists roster and made his New York recital debut. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music, including performances of William Bolcom’s Pulitzer-winning set, Twelve New Etudes for Piano, and has given, alongside his wife, pianist Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s Four Hands and Alexander Goehr’s Seven Impromptus. Dank and Lee have also featured the world premiere of multiple-Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano for four hands. Now an associate professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, Dank still performs widely and has returned to Cleveland as a juror for the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists.

Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style” and by The Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” As a second-prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition, Lee went on to graduate from the Juilliard School, where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award. She received her doctor of musical arts from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In 2022, Lee returned to the Juilliard School as piano faculty. The following summer, she came back to Cleveland to serve as faculty for the 2023 Cleveland International Piano Institute for Young Artists. 

The views expressed by performers during this event are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Museum of Art.