South Korean native Koeun Grace Lee is a pianist based in the Chicago area. She is a Continuing Education Instructor in Piano at Harper College Community Music and Arts Center, serves as a pianist at the Community Church of Barrington, and operates a private piano studio. Dr. Lee is an active member of the Music Teachers National Association, the College Music Society, New Music Chicago, the Suzuki Association of the Americas, and the American Musicological Society. She is a recipient of MTNA Teacher Enrichment Grants in recent years, the 2024 American Musicological Society Career Development Grant in American Music, and the 2022 Steinway Top Teacher Award.

Dr. Lee has presented lectures and performances at numerous conferences throughout her career. Most recently, she presented Korean composer Texu Kim’s solo piano works at the Composition in Asia International Symposium and Festival at the University of South Florida and performed solo and collaborative contemporary repertoire at the TUTTI Festival at Denison University. She also presented Navigating Hypermobility: Assisting Young Pianists with Double-Jointed Fingers at the 2025 MTNA National Conference and NCKP, as well as the 2024 Illinois State Music Teachers Association Conference. She has appeared at several College Music Society National Conferences and will appear at the upcoming 2026 conference. In 2011, she presented a lecture recital on Isang Yun’s Fünf Stücke für Klavier (1958) at the CMS International Conference in Korea. She later completed a DMA dissertation related to the work, titled Isang Yun’s Musical Bilingualism: Serial Technique and Korean Elements in Fünf Stücke für Klavier (1958) and His Later Piano Works. Over the past decade, she has given numerous presentations on Isang Yun’s piano works, as well as on David Burge’s Go-Hyang, at CMS regional conferences, the Composition in Asia International Symposium, and various guest artist seminars. Her performances have aired on Music in Chicago on WFMT, Chicago’s classical and folk music radio station, as well as on other radio stations and webcasts. Her 2023 album, Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe and Other Selected Piano Works, has been featured on classical music radio and webcasts such as WWFM, WMBR, WFMT, to name a few.

Dr. Lee holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Master of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in Piano and Piano Pedagogy, as well as an Artist Diploma, from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. She is also a certified Suzuki piano teacher for all books and received a Pass with Distinction for RCM Levels A through 4 (Teaching Elementary Piano).