As one of a new generation of pianists who performs on pianos that span the history of the instrument, Mike Lee has garnered attention for his fresh perspectives and boldness of ideas. Awarded Second and Audience prizes at the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition by a jury that included the late Christopher Hogwood and Robert Levin, Mike has performed in notable venues across the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Integrating performance traditions, he has collaborated equally with modern and historical performers such as Michael Tilson Thomas, musicians from the Juilliard, Formosa, and Aizuri quartets, Francisco Fullana, Clancy Newman, Zvi Plesser, Tatiana Samouil, among others.
A passionate educator, Mike regularly gives masterclasses at the world’s most renowned institutions and schools. Recent invitations include the Fryderyk Chopin Institute-Warsaw as artist-faculty at its US masterclasses, the Curtis Institute, Royal Academy of Music, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, University of Southern California, Smithsonian Institution, New World Symphony, etc. Mike has also collaborated with ToneBase – the leading online learning platform – to introduce period pianos to its more than 8000 global subscribers.
As a scholar, Mike’s research lies at the intersection between music theory, performance and analysis, performance practice, embodiment, philosophy of mind, and organology. His articles have appeared in 19th-Century Music (embodiment and hermeneutics in Chopin), Music Theory Online (Formenlehre and historical meter in Schubert), and Early Music America Magazine (period pianos and their present-day makers). As a Mellon Foundation grant recipient, his conference presentations – at Society for Music Theory, European Music Analysis Congress, Society for Music Analysis – have additionally engaged topics that range from schema theory to exploring the applicability of Klumpenhouwer Networks to tonal structures.
In recent years, Mike has assumed the curatorship of important instrument collections. He has served as Director of the Australian National University Keyboard Institute, where he oversaw the southern hemisphere’s largest collection of historical pianos, and Artist-in-Residence at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, where he developed interdisciplinary programs and curated its collection. Over the years, he has worked with instrument builders such as Rodney Regier, Thomas and Barbara Wolf, and Paul McNulty.
Prior to UCLA, Mike was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University Bloomington. He holds a PhD in musicology from Cornell University and degrees in piano performance from the New England Conservatory and Yale.
