Virtuosos run in the family with the Lees of Fremont

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 20, 2006 | by Column by Cheryl North

BEHAVORIAL psychologists, geneticists and classical music fans will have an opportunity to observe a unique phenomenon when sisters Angela, Lisa and Melinda Lee perform as the Lee Trio for a concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco.

Every so often a young musical protege steps onto the concert stage and proceeds to amaze audiences with his uncommonly advanced technique and musicality. Inevitably, we "ooh" and "aah" that such talent can bloom in one so young. But amazement escalates into downright astonishment when three such dazzling proteges emerge from a single family.

Such is the case with the Lee Trio, who as small children were enrolled in the acclaimed Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where their mother also taught piano.

I've watched their progress, individually and collectively, since they were little girls growing up in Fremont back in the late 1980s. The daughters of Chinese immigrant Ruth Lee, now a highly successful State Farm agent, and their adopted father, Roy Lee, a mathematician now retired from Sandia Laboratories in Livermore, the comely young ladies, with their doll-like beauty, have now attracted worldwide attention.

But their fame has not noticeably diminished their down-home, downright American accessibility and friendliness.

Cellist Angela, the eldest, started the family off on its prize- winning streak in 1980 by winning the Pepsi Cola Concerto Competition and, as a result, made her San Francisco Symphony debut with Tchaikovsky's "Variations on a Rococo Theme." At age 17, she made her debut in the People's Republic of China as a soloist with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing.

She earned a bachelor's degree from the Juilliard School in New York City and a master's in Music from Yale University. Next came a Fulbright Scholarship to study in London, and then, a grant from the Foundation of American Musicians in Europe. She won the Jury Prize in the 2001 Naumburg International Cello Competition and in 2002, became a Fellow of the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

She has soloed in both Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City; the South Bank Centre in London, and throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

Angela is married to Paul Chew, who works with State Farm Insurance, and they have a 2 year-old-son named Schuyler (which, I'm told, translates as "scholar."). They live in San Francisco.

Middle sister Lisa, the violin virtuoso of the trio, graduated from Fremont's Mission San Jose High School. The spring before her 1992 graduation, she won the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic Orchestra's (now called the Fremont Symphony) Young Artist Competition. Only a few months later, she captured the national spotlight by winning first place in the Seventeen Magazine-General Motors National Concerto Competition and made her solo debut with the San Francisco Symphony -- all of this by the age of 16!

Her next major milestone was graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music, after which,

as a Fulbright Scholar she earned a graduate diploma from London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Among her prize wins are the International Tadeusz Wronski Solo Violin Competition, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, the National Hennessy Cognac Scholarship Foundation and the International Sheffield Violin Competition.

Pianist Melinda, the youngest of the Lee sisters, was the first in the family, at the tender age of 12, to win first place in the Fremont Symphony's Young Artist's competition.

By age 15, she won first place in the piano competition of the prestigious Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition -- and all this while making top grades as a student at Fremont's Washington High School. Awards for the genial young genius then started tumbling in. Among them were first places in the Hennessy Cognac Performing Arts Awards; the Young Keyboard Artist's Association Internation Competition, the U.S. Opera Music Competition, the National Young Artist's Competition and the Bartok Competition. She waited until 1999 to make her Carnegie Hall solo debut, and then went on to graduate with honors from Harvard University.

Ah, but it was not all work and sweat for Melinda. While she was headquartered in New York City, she had a storybook romance with Ken- David Masur, the only son of Kurt Masur (then the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra).

Ken-David and Melinda married in March of 2004, with gala wedding ceremonies and receptions in New York City, Germany and San Francisco.

Since before Melinda's marriage, the girls have concentrated their careers as the Lee Trio. Besides many appearances in London, they've played concerts in Europe and the United States. Last November they played a five-city tour to China, giving recitals and master classes and performing what has become one of their signature pieces, Beethoven's Triple Concerto.

The Lee Trio's Herbst Theatre program will include Beethoven's Op. 70 Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, the "Ghost"; the Dudley arrangement of Bach's Chaconne from his Violin Partita No. 2; San Franciscan Nat Stookey's "Above the Thomas Gate" and Schumann's Op. 110 Piano Trio No. 3.