The final concert of the 2007 Summer Concert Series will be on Wednesday, August 1 at 7:00 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall in the Class of 1945 Library. Pianists Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata will perform in a duo piano recital entitled “Landmarks of Sonic Architecture.” Sponsored by the Friends of the Academy Library, the event is free and open to the public.

The program will feature two works for one piano-four hands: Brahms' Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 23, followed by the performers’ original arrangement for one piano-four hands of the first eight fugues from J. S. Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of the Fugue).

The Brahms piece is based on the "last musical idea" composed by Schumann (which Schumann said he imagined was communicated to him by Schubert and Mendelssohn!) before his untimely passing at the age of 46. The Bach, considered one of the pinnacles of human creativity, was published without a clearly definitive instrumentation on four open staves and has been performed in diverse media ranging from keyboard solo, organ, string quartet, brass quintet, to chamber orchestra, full orchestra, and even synthesizers.

Lee and Sakata view The Art of the Fugue as "a cycle of variations where each 'variation' happens to be a fugue" (which would make this work unique in music history). All the fugues (which Bach referred to as Contrapunctae) involve constant development and crystallization of materials in such a way that each fugue sounds like a singular entity. Each is a unique working out of specific problems and processes internal to it. At the same time, each fugue functions as part of larger scale evolutions of accumulation, complexity, and distillation that run through the course of the entire cycle.

Both members of the Academy’s music faculty, Lee and Sakata are active musically in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. This summer they have been invited to be the 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 Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum. In the summer of 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. The tour was co-sponsored by the Spoleto Music Festival (USA), Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Phillips Exeter Academy. In June 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, as well as 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 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 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, Vogt labels as well). Lee has taught piano at Phillips Exeter Academy since 1996; Sakata has taught piano, harpsichord, 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, and then in Boston with Patricia Zander (receiving her master’s and graduate diploma from New England Conservatory) and Tong-il Han (Doctoral Studies — Boston University). She was the first and only two-time recipient of Boston University’s Mary Lee Shephard Award.

From 1997-2004, Sakata served on the faculty of both the Piano and Theoretical Studies departments at 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, with Veronica Jochum, the Piano Performance Seminar (a lecture-recital and master class series featuring NEC faculty and visiting artists from around the world). He received his DMA in Piano Performance and Double MM in Piano/Harpsichord Performance from New England Conservatory, as well as a BM in Piano Performance from California State University/Northridge, where he was the recipient of the Bronislaw Gimpel Memorial Award. Sakata studied piano with Veronica Jochum and Charles Fierro; harpsichord/fortepiano with John Gibbons; and theory/composition with Robert Cogan, Beverly Grisby, Daniel Kessner.

For further information, please contact Jacquelyn H. Thomas, Academy Librarian, (603) 777-3328.

Learn more about the 2007 Summer Concert Series.