Noël Lee

Noël Lee (December 25, 1924 – July 15, 2013) was an American classical pianist and composer. Biography Born in 1924 in Nanjing, China, Lee studied music in Lafayette, Indiana, then attended Harvard University, studying with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Tillman Merritt and was also a student at the Longy School of Music in the early 1940s. Following World War II, he traveled to Paris, where he studied music with Nadia Boulanger and was a friend of Douglas Allanbrook. He composed orchestral, chamber, piano, vocal, and film music. In addition, he completed several unfinished piano works by Franz Schubert, and composed cadenzas for piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He was also well known for his piano accompaniment. Lee was a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College. He received numerous awards throughout his career, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his creative work in 1959, and from France, twice laureate of the Fondation de France, in 1998, the grade of Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and, in 1999, from the city of Paris, the Grand Prix de la Musique. Lee’s fi