Lauded for her “impeccable technique and artistic interpretation” [The Columbian], American pianist Melinda Lee Masur has garnered first prize in such competitions as the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, the Young Keyboard Artist’s Association Competition, the United States Open Music Competition, the National Young Artist’s Competition and the Bartók Awards.

Since her orchestral debut at age 13 performing the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1, she has appeared as soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Midland Symphony, the Fremont Symphony Orchestra, the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra and the Harvard-Radcliffe Bach Society Orchestra. She has performed on nationally broadcast radio, including Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess and San Francisco’s Making Waves Series, as well as on Hong Kong’s classical radio and television station, RTHK4.

As soloist and avid chamber musician, Melinda has performed at the Ravinia Festival, the International Piano Series in Charleston, South Carolina, the New Millennium International Piano Festival, the Festival Les Muséiques Basel and in cities throughout the United States, Europe, Hong Kong and China, and gave her Carnegie Hall debut in 1999 as a benefit to the youth and Chinese communities of New York City. Melinda is also founding member of The Lee Trio together with her sisters Lisa, violinist, and Angela, cellist. Since the occasion of its Wigmore Hall debut in 2002, critics have raved about the Trio’s “gripping immediacy and freshness” [The Strad] and how “the three sisters played with a maturity and musical insight rarely found in artists twice their age” [Musical Opinion]. The trio has regularly performed on both sides of the Atlantic and completed its first Asia tour in 2005, giving recitals and master classes in Hong Kong, Macao, Hangzhou and Shanghai, and performances of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Macao Youth Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra and Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra.

Melinda Lee Masur began her musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division as a piano student of Erna Gulabyan. Her other Bay Area mentors include pianists Mack McCray and Betty Woo, and violist Susan Bates for chamber music. In 2000, she graduated with honors from Harvard University with a B.A. in Psychology, where she continued her piano and chamber music studies with American composer Leon Kirchner and pianist Robert Levin, as well as with Kurt Stallmann for composition. In New York City, she studied with pianists Sergei Edelmann, Anna Kim and Jeffrey Swann. Currently completing her Konzertexamen Diplom at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover in Germany with pianist Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Melinda has also studied Lied-piano with baritone Thomas Quasthoff and Lied-pianist Wolfram Rieger in Berlin. She divides her time between Berlin and San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Ken-David, and their children, Magdalena and Lukas.