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Lee University’s School of Music will present the Chamber Music Showcase on Friday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Squires Recital Hall, located in the Humanities Center on Lee’s campus. The event will be co-directed by Dr. Muen Vanessa Wei, assistant professor of piano, and Dr. Gloria Chien, artist in residence at Lee.  

Lee University’s chamber music program focuses on classical music performed by small ensembles. The participating students audition and are placed into duos, trios, and other groupings. Throughout the semester, these ensembles meet with faculty members from Lee’s School of Music each week for coaching and critique. The Chamber Music Showcase highlights the achievements the chamber ensembles have made throughout the semester.  

The ensemble includes instrumentalists on guitar, horn, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano, as well as vocalists. The concert will feature works by John Downland, Franz Schubert, and Richard Strauss, covering the span of 400 years.  

“The chamber music program gives the students a great opportunity to work with each other, and the showcase allows them to share the end result of their hard work and collaboration with one another,” said Wei.  

In preparation for this showcase, the students were coached by some of Lee’s School of Music faculty, including Gordon James, instructor of horn, and Alan Shikoh, instructor of guitar, along with Wei and Chien.  

The student performers in this semester’s ensemble include Emma Burnett and Elena Hardison, vocalists; Allison Turner, guitar; Noah Hamilton, horn; Robert Arenson, piano; Daphne Jiang, violin; Jonathan Meyer, viola; Amy Wu, cello; and Mansfield Yiu, double bass.  

Wei joined Lee’s School of Music in 2021 as an assistant professor of piano and teaches courses such as applied piano, collaborative piano, and chamber music. She has collaborated with many great musicians including Lynn Harrell, Ian Hobson, Peter Lloyd, and Joel Smirnoff. Wei also has a debut album titled “Im 3/4 Takt” that was considered “one of Centaur’s finest releases to date” by Fanfare.  

Chien is the co-artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, as well as the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont, along with her husband, Violinist Soovin Kim. In the fall of 2009, she launched String Theory at The Hunter, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in downtown Chattanooga, as its founder and artistic director. She frequently appears with the Chamber Music Society (CMS) and is a Steinway Artist.  

The concert is free, non-ticketed, and open to the public. The concert will also be available for livestream viewing at https://leeu.live/.  

For more information about this performance or other School of Music events, contact the School of Music at (423) 614-8240.