{"id":7360,"date":"2009-11-24T14:00:07","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=7360"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:36:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:36:13","slug":"renown-cellist-and-associate-professor-of-music-kangho-lee-performs-dec-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/11\/renown-cellist-and-associate-professor-of-music-kangho-lee-performs-dec-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Renowned Cellist Kangho Lee Performs at Jorgensen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Kangho<\/a>
Kangho Lee, cello, associate professor of music, and Minyoung Lee, piano, a teacher at the Community School of the Arts, perform. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Kangho Lee was growing up in Seoul, South Korea, his family moved into a high-rise apartment building. His mother heard someone in another apartment practicing the cello. She knocked on the door and asked who was giving lessons for the instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how it all started,\u201d recalls Lee, associate professor of music and coordinator of applied music in the School of Fine Arts, who performed a program of cello and piano music with pianist Minyoung Lee, an adjunct professor of music at UConn, on Dec. 1 at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With his older sisters playing piano and violin, Lee often performed with his sisters and, as the winner of a Young Artists Competition, he made his orchestral debut with the Seoul Philharmonic at the age of 12. The following year he was invited by Heiichiro Ohyama<\/a>, who was the Principal Violist of the LA Philharmonic, to come to the United States and he subsequently received his high school education in California.<\/p>\n

Even as a high school student, Lee was very active as a performer. He worked under such renowned musicians as Andre Previn and Sir Simon Rattle, and gave solo and chamber music recitals in Los Angeles, Seoul, Boston and San Jose.\u00a0 As the assistant conductor of the Colburn School Orchestra, Lee gave concerts in Los Angeles and San Diego as well as in London and other cities in England. However, because his parents did not think music would provide a career for him, Lee went on to study economics at Swarthmore College, even as he continued to perform and pursue music studies during summer breaks as an artist-in-residence or as a student at music festivals in the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n

After completing his degree in economics, Lee decided it was time to see if he could become a full-time musician. He was accepted to the master\u2019s program at the Yale School of Music.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy thought was to try and pursue music before I got any older because, unlike other studies, you have a time limit,\u201d Lee says. \u201cYour body doesn\u2019t have much time to acquire the technical skills. I tell my students they should try to master the instrument by their mid-twenties. Those were my happiest days, because I was pursuing music full-time for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee, who earned his doctorate in musical arts from the New England Conservatory, went on to perform with leading orchestras such as the Korean Broadcast System Symphony, the Euro-Asia Symphony, the Sofia National Academy Orchestra, and the Halle Philharmonic. He has performed as a soloist in Paris, Milan, and Rome, and was invited by the Moscow Conservatory to perform in Moscow and St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

In 2009 alone, Lee gave recitals in St. Louis, Boston, Knoxville, Newark and Seoul, and his performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Korean Symphony was televised nationally in Korea. As a chamber musician,\u00a0 Lee has collaborated with the principal players of the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic as well as faculty members of the Curtis Institute, Yale, Juilliard, and MIT.\u00a0 As a guest artist, he gave master classes at Boston University, the University of Tennessee and the University of Ulsan in Korea.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Kangho<\/a>
Kangho Lee, associate professor of music, teaches cello in a one-on-one lesson with sophomore Samuel DeCaprio. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI really do enjoy the liberal arts and the academic side of life and music as well,\u201d Lee says. \u201cMy area of specialty is applied music performance. But what I\u2019m proud of at UConn is that we not only provide a great education in the applied area but we have really first rate musicologists and theorists working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says he tries to use his liberal arts background as a teacher of music. He notes that one of his favorite \u201cscholar-politicians\u201d is Robert Reich, the former U.S Labor Secretary under President Clinton, who argues in his book The Work of Nations<\/em> that the nation needs \u201cpeople who can identify problems, solve problems, and facilitate these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the setting is different, my job as a teacher is to teach my students how to identify both music and physical-technical problems and approach them analytically so they are able to become lifelong learners \u2013 to continue to grow after they are done with their formal education,\u201d Lee says.<\/p>\n

He says one of the most enjoyable parts of his teaching in the School of Fine Arts is working with the Jorgensen Outreach for Youth program (JOY!)<\/a>, which invites low-income children and young adults to arts events in order to provide the opportunity to enrich, educate, and enhance their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the great things about this University,\u201d he says. \u201cIt presents the very top of the profession, but also is very conscious about reaching out to kids who may not have had a chance to experience anything like this. I am happy that we are able to work together with the community and have this cooperative outreach program.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his pedagogy class, Lee\u2019s students get hands-on experience teaching and working with students in the JOY! program. \u201cI think it\u2019s something we ought to continue to do and promote,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Samples of Lee’s work from his CD Cinema Cello<\/em> can be heard here:<\/p>\n

Schubert: Serenade<\/a><\/p>\n

Bach: Air (from Suite #3 for orchestra)<\/a><\/p>\n

Elgar: Salut D’Amour<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kangho Lee, an associate professor of music, shares a passion for music and teaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-7360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-24 13:23:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7360"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36393,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360\/revisions\/36393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7360"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=7360"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}