An Evening with Piano Cleveland Live

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. Mr. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music including performances of William Bolcom’s Pulitzer winning set of “Twelve New Etudes,” and has given, alongside pianist and wife, Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s “Four Hands,” and Alexander Goehr’s “Seven Impromptus.” Mr. Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee have also featured the world premiere of multiple grammy-nominated pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano 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 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, Soyeon Kate 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.