Exeter, NH (January 17, 2008)—On Tuesday, February 5, 2008, 7 p.m., the Phillips Exeter Academy Music Department will present a faculty recital with music instructors Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata, piano, inside Phillips Church, located on the corner of Tan Lane and Front Street. The concert is free and open to the public.

The evening’s performance, “Polyphonic Raptures: A Piano Duo Recital of J.S. Bach’s ‘Die Kunst der Fugue’ and Schumann’s ‘Symphony No. 4 in D Minor,’ ” will include original, four-hand arrangements of the first eight fugues from Bach and the 1852 version from Schumann.

The Art of Fugue—considered one of the pinnacles of human creativity and a work which the composer spent the final decade of his life working on—is the culminating musical offering of Bach’s lifelong occupation potentializing polyphonic art to its richest and most complex dimensions. The Schumann Symphony—written some 100 years after the Bach—was originally composed in 1841 and then later revised in 1852 for piano four hands. The Symphony’s four movements unfold without breaks, one after another. Conductor Herbert von Karajan described this work as almost maniacal, with recurring themes, like “an idea which is held on to all the way to the point of madness.”

Both members of the Academy’s music faculty, Lee and Sakata are active musically in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. This June, they will perform a series of concerts featuring music of Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Wagner in Germany, France and Switzerland for the “Swiss Collections and Landscapes of the Rhine” tour, co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard and Princeton Universities. This past summer, they were featured guest artists, giving a series of commentary concerts in Germany, Austria and Hungary for the “Masterpieces of Bavaria” tour, co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum. In 2006, they represented Phillips Exeter Academy as the featured artists for the “In Celebration of Mozart” tour—performing a series of all-Mozart programs in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia—celebrating the composer’s 250th anniversary, which was co-sponsored by the Spoleto Music Festival (USA), Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, National Trust for Historic Preservation and Phillips Exeter Academy. In 2005, they were the featured guest artists of the Premiere Week of Contemporary Music at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre – Brazil): performing duo and solo piano works of Donatoni, Holliger, Cogan, Cage, Escot and Ichiyanagi (Auditorium Tasso Corrêa – Instituto de Artes); giving master classes; and lecturing on the relationship between contemporary music and cinema.

In 2000, Lee and Sakata participated in an unprecedented tour of six of the most prominent institutions in the People’s Republic of China (conservatories of Beijing Central, Shanghai, China National, Xi’an, Wuhan and Tsinghua University) with fellow artists Rebecca Ng (percussion – Hong Kong) and Shen Li (saxophone – Taiwan) in the music of Lei Liang. That same year, they appeared as featured performers at the Talloires International Composers Conference (France). Lee and Sakata have also been featured guest artists of the Williams College Multicultural Center; Harvard University’s Society of Fellows; and other universities, colleges and cultural institutions throughout North America. They have recorded together on the Encounter and Sachimay labels; Sakata has recorded on the Centaur, Neuma, Gunmar and Vogt labels as well. Lee has taught piano at Phillips Exeter Academy since 1996; Sakata has taught piano, harpsichord and composition at Phillips Exeter Academy since 1994.

After piano studies with Korean national treasure Kisun Yun, Lee worked in Los Angeles with Charles Fierro, receiving her Bachelor of Music at California State University-Northridge; then in Boston with Patricia Zander, receiving her master’s and graduate diploma from the New England Conservatory; and with Tong-il Han, for her doctoral studies at Boston University. She was the first and the only two-time recipient of B.U.’s Mary Lee Shephard Award.

From 1997–2004, Sakata served on the faculty of both the Piano and Theoretical Studies departments at the New England Conservatory, where he directed graduate seminars on Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” Mozart’s piano sonatas, keyboard literature from the 14th- 21st centuries, and co-directed the Piano Performance Seminar—a lecture-recital and master class series featuring NEC faculty and visiting artists from around the world—with Veronica Jochum. He received his doctorate and double masters’ degrees from the New England Conservatory. At California State University/Northridge, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, he was the recipient of the Bronislaw Gimpel Memorial Award. Sakata studied piano with Jochum and Fierro; harpsichord/fortepiano with John Gibbons; and theory/composition with Robert Cogan, Beverly Grisby and Daniel Kessner.

For further information, please call the music department at (603) 777-3453. To learn more about Exeter's concert series, please check the Musical Events calendar page. To learn more about events at Exeter, please check the News & Events section of the website. Or, for a recorded voice line listing upcoming events, dial: (603) 777-4309.  Directions to the Academy are available online.

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory school that was founded in 1781 and originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, students come from a wide variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds. The diverse student body comes from approximately 45 states, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and 23 foreign countries.