Dr. Patricia Taylor Lee - Bio »

Pianist Patricia Taylor Lee, the Artistic Director of the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, is Professor of Music and immediate Past Chair of the Music Department at San Francisco State University.  Prior to moving to San Francisco she was for ten years Professor of Keyboard Music at West Chester University in Pennsylvania where she also served as chair of the Keyboard Department, Acting Dean of Graduate Studies, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Professional Studies, and Acting Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs.  Previously she taught for six years at the University of California at Davis.

 

Dr. Lee is a native of Portland, Oregon.  She received a B.A. in music from Mills College, where her teachers included Alexander Libermann, Leon Kirchner, and Darius Milhaud.  She earned an M.A. from Yale University under Leo Schrade and a D.M.A. from Temple University, where she studied piano with Adele Marcus.  Her doctoral dissertation discussed the Solo Piano Music of Darius Milhaud, her former teacher.

 

Patricia Taylor Lee has performed throughout the country as a soloist, in chamber music, and with orchestra.  For ten years she was the official pianist of the Sacramento Symphony.  She is a frequent lecturer and the author of numerous articles published by the National Piano Foundation, Clavier, and the American Music Teacher.  She serves often as an adjudicator and has been a member of the jury for the Gina Bachauer Piano Competition, the Joanna Hodges Piano Competition, the Irving Klein String Competition, and the national finals of the Baldwin, Mason & Hamlin, and Collegiate Competitions of the Music Teachers National Association. 

 

Dr. Lee is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Alpha Iota.  She holds the Master Teacher Certificate from the Music Teachers National Association.  A member of the National Association of Schools of Music Commission on Accreditation, she has also served NASM as regional chair and a member of the nominating committee.  She is a member of the executive committees of the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition and the San Francisco Community Music Center as well as the boards of the Ross McKee Foundation and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music.  She is a past trustee of Mills College, the Women’s Philharmonic, the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, and the Sacramento Symphony.