Acclaimed Pianist and Vocal Coach Sylvia Olden Lee ’38 In Oberlin for Master Class and Forum By Marci Janas ‘91
	RELATED ARTICLES: Black Musicians' Guild to Present Concert in Honor of Black History Month Oberlin Conservatory Black Musicians’ Guild To Hold Forum With Conductor Michael Morgan ’79 Oberlin Conservatory Black Musicians’ Guild Presents Composer Anthony Kelley		Pianist and vocal coach Sylvia Olden Lee ’38 has had an illustrious career. As a performer she has been invited to the White House; as an educator, she has taught dozens of singers, Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman among them. The granddaughter of slaves, she was the first African-American professional musician at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she was vocal coach from 1954 to 1956. Now, Oberlin students will have the rare opportunity to avail themselves of her experience and knowledge. Under the auspices of the Conservatory’s Black Musicians Guild, Olden Lee will conduct a master class in Kulas Recital Hall on Sunday, April 28, from 6 to 8 p.m. The following day, at 4:30 p.m. in Bibbins Room 223, she will lead a forum: The Sylvia Olden Lee Experience: Oberlin, the Met, Curtis and Beyond. Music was her family’s destiny. Her mother, Sylvia Ward Olden, graduated from Fisk University with degrees in piano and voice. A successful concert artist, she began teaching her 5-year-old daughter the piano. Olden Lee’s father, J.C. Olden, was a minister who had studied classical singing and was a member of the Fisk Quartet. Olden Lee began accompanying him in Schubert lieder and her mother in French songs when she was 8 years old. She soon began studying voice with Frank LaForge; she presented her first public piano recital at age 11. She transferred to Oberlin from Howard University on a full scholarship, graduating with a piano major. A member of Pi Kappa Lambda, she also minored in organ. Fast-forward several years, past programs with Paul Robeson, study in New York City with Victor Wittgenstein, and teaching and accompanying in the studios of such renowned pedagogues as Elisabeth Schumann, Eva Gautier, Konraad Bos, and Fritz Lehmann. By 1952 she was coaching opera at Tanglewood with Boris Goldovsky and served as technical advisor for Tanglewood’s world premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. She was also married to Everett Lee, and helped him prepare concert versions of his opera concerts with the Cosmopolitan Symphony and at Columbia University’s Opera Workshop. She studied Italian opera, oratorio, and song literature at St. Cecilia Conservatorio in Italy, and coached Italian and American singers there. One student under her exclusive tutelage went on to win the Lausanne Prize in 1953. In 1970, Olden Lee was appointed to the Curtis Institute of Music’s opera department, where she was professor of vocal interpretation for more than twenty years.
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