Lisa Yui

Lisa Yui (BM ’98, piano) enjoys a multifaceted musical career as pianist, lecturer, educator, author, and musical director. Since making her concerto debut at age 7, she has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. She was the top prizewinner of the Senigallia International Piano Competition in Italy and has twice been the recipient of a Canada Council Scholarship.

Yui has performed as soloist with prominent orchestras including the Tokyo and Toronto symphonies, the Polish National Radio, and the Krakow State Philharmonic. She has performed in Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum in Budapest. She represented Canada while performing in the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan. Her DVD/Blu-ray of four Beethoven Sonatas and CD of music by Carl Maria von Weber and Jan Ladislav Dussek garnered rave reviews.

Yui’s insightful writing on a variety of topics has appeared in Clavier, EPTA’s Piano Journal, and Listen. She has given lectures on a vast array of subjects and has taught graduate courses on piano literature, historical recordings, and the Beethoven piano sonatas. She has worked extensively with cutting-edge music technology through her long-distance remote lessons and performances using the Yamaha Disklavier, an acoustic/digital hybrid player piano.

Yui’s principal teachers and mentors include Byron Janis, Marc Silverman, Giovanni Valentini, Oxana Yablonskaya, Edna Golandsky, David Dubal, and Leonid Hambro. She received her MM and DMA at Manhattan School of Music (MSM), which awarded her the Roy M. Rubinstein Award, given to a graduate with exceptional promise in piano, and the Helen Cohn Award, given to an outstanding doctoral graduate.

Yui is on the faculty of MSM, where she is also associate dean of assessment and academic programs. In 2018, she received the MSM president’s medal for distinguished service.