Kuo-Ying Lee's Art Works
"Bringing imagination to life through art"
About Kuo-Ying Lee



Founder of the Zhaoqing Artnesting Digital Music Technology Co., Ltd.
Kuo-Ying obtained a Doctorate in Piano Performance from the University of North Texas, a Master's degree in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor's degree from National Taiwan Normal University. During her studies, she achieved first place in piano solo and viola solo at the Taiwan Student Music Competition and also won first prize at the Oberlin International Piano Competition in the United States.
While in the U.S., she studied under Vladimir Viardo, who was a first-prize winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and Alexander Korsantia, a gold medalist at the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition. In 2011, she was invited to be the resident pianist for the Castleton Festival Orchestra and performed in North America and Canada. Her performances were broadcast by WETA Classical in Washington, D.C. From 2012 to 2013, she worked as a contracted piano accompanist at the Amarillo Opera in Texas and the Vancouver Summer Opera Festival in Canada. In 2015, she was invited by the Macau Band Association to tour Macau with trumpeter Julian Lam. In 2016, she was invited by the Shanghai Musicians Association and the International Piano Association Union to serve as a music expert and perform a solo concert at the Silk Road International Piano Master Summer Academy in Lanzhou. In 2018, she was invited to perform solo at the Taichung National Opera House in the "Hearing Haydn" series, curated by music critic Yang Zhao. In 2019, she was invited to give a lecture and concert at the Porto International Piano Festival in Portugal. In 2021, she participated in the "Piano in Blossom City" Guangdong Province University Teachers Joint Piano Concert. Currently, she is an associate professor at the Music College of Zhaoqing University. She has previously served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Music at National Chiao Tung University and the Department of Music at Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
She has received numerous accolades including the 2021 Asia International Art Competition and the 2022 Hong Kong International Invitational Competition Excellent Mentor awards from the Asian Musicians Association. In addition, she has been recognized as an Excellent Mentor at the 2023 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Youth Piano Competition and the 2023 Yangtze River Piano Scholarship Competition, as well as at the KAWWAI Piano Competition. In the summer of 2024, she will be presenting lecture concerts at Durham University and King's College London in the UK. Furthermore, she has served as a reviewer for prestigious international academic journals such as the MIT Leonardo Music Journal and The International Journal of Humanities Education since 2024.
Academic Experience and Activities

Education
2008-2013
Doctoral degree in Piano Performance
University of North Texas
2004-2006
Master degree in Piano Performance
New England Conservatory
2000-2004
Bachelor degree in Fine Arts
National Taiwan Normal University

· Teaching and working Experience
2019- Zhaoqing University, College of Music Full-Time Associate Professor
2015-2019 National Tsing Hua University, Music Department Adjunct Assistant Professor
2014-2019 NYMCTU, Institute of Music Adjunct Assistant Professor
2014-2017 National Chi Nan University, General Education Center, Adjunct Assistant Professor
2013-2013 Vancouver Opera Studio (part-time) Contracted répétiteur
2012-2013 Amarillo Opera Contracted rehearsal pianist (part-time)
2011, Castleton Festival Orchestra Principal keyboardist/Pit orchestra keyboardist (part-time)
2008-2010 University of North Texas, Music Department Teaching Fellowship
2006-2008 Putai Elementary School, Music Center Full-Time Instructor
2006-2006 North Cambridge Catholic High School, Boston Staff Accompanist (part-time)
2005-2006 Suzuki School of Newton Staff accompanist (part-time)
Portfolio

As the founder of Zhaoqing Artnesting Digital Music Technology Digital Co., Ltd., Kuo-Ying has been involved in the study of human sensory experience. The company's goal is to collaborate on researching human sensory integration.
Most recently published articles by Lee address the topic of synesthesia, which list her discoveries on visual-auditory synesthetic examples by various classical music composers. The article "A Comparative Study of Synesthetic Examples of Selected keyboard works by Scriabin, Messiaen and Ligeti" was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and explores different means of multisensory integration of sound and image expressed by three composers. Scriabin established a spectral ordering of the Mystic chord color wheel in his work, Prometheus, Poem of Fire, Op.60 (1910), through his colored keyboard, which would project colored light into the auditorium when specific keys were depressed. Messiaen demonstrated a very different version of synesthetic affinity in contrast with Scriabin. In his Préludes pour piano (1928-1929),he applied three basic types of color labels: sole color, complex color, and a wide range of color combinations. Ligeti's experience of the inter-sensory relationship between visual and auditory domains was developed to an even greater extent. To imitate the pictorial designs in visual artworks, he sought to blend sound, lines, colors, and computer-generated images in his piano etudes, Vertige and The Endless Column (1985-2001). With the diversity of audio-visual synesthesia, I further discussed the different opinions between Jonathan Bernard's sound-color correspondences and B. M. Galeyev's interpretation of color-hearing on Messiaen's synesthetic examples as current existing scholarly research on synesthetic music diverge into opposite directions concerning color-hearing. In my study "Rethinking Auditory-Visual Synesthesia: A Case Study of Messiaen's Synesthetic Behaviors," I explained the leading cause of divergence between different listener's aesthetic experiences by presentingan experiment that informally requests a non-synesthete audience to report their first impression of listening to Messiaen's synesthetic music. By observing the averaging response time of the participants, the result proposes to rethink the meaning of visual-auditory synesthesia to the audience. Inspired by the observation, I believe that each individual's cultural environment is equally relevant to his or her unconscious phenomenal perceptions of musical aesthetic experience. Hence, visual-auditory synesthesia deserves more cultivation in terms of meaning beyond coloristic indications.
Contact
Opening hours of Zhaoqing Artnesting Music Technology Co. Ltd.
Mon-Thu: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Fri: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Address
Room B206, National University Science and Technology Park, Zhaoqing University, Qixing 2nd Road, Duanzhou District, Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, China (east of Zhaoqing University)
Contact
kuoyinglee@hotmail.com
