Laurissa Yee

Laurissa Yee is a junior at Manalapan High School in Manalapan. She studies piano with Ingrid Clarfield, of Princeton. In the past eleven years of piano studies, she has won numerous awards.

Laurissa was the grand prizewinner of CACA-YPMP’s Twentieth Anniversary Piano Competition in 2002. She is a two-time winner of the Andrew De Grado Piano Competition and performed in the Winners’ Recital at Kean University. Also, she received honorable mention in Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Junior H.S. Baldwin Piano Competition, in 2000 and was the alternate winner to represent New Jersey in 2001. As recipient of Lou Kotlus Memorial Award in 2001, she performed with Manalapan Battleground Symphony. Laurissa was a first place winner in New Jersey Music Teachers Association (NJMTA) Young Artists competition in 1999. She was winner of the Plainfield Symphony Society’s Young Performer Competition in 1998 and was featured as soloist with the Plainfield Symphony Orchestra. She has won the Chiang Wen Yeh International Young Artist piano competition for three consecutive years and has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Her other musical accomplishment include nine years of High Honors in the NJMTA annual audition, three years of Distinction award from the Associated Board of The Royal School of Music, and recipient of the Westminister Conservatory Scholarship in 1995.

Laurissa has had many recitals and performances at the Westminister Conservatory where she studied in the Young Artists Program. Over the years, she has performed at Teachers College at Columbia University, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Cami Hall, and Steinway Hall. At the age of nine, she performed at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She has appeared twice as a guest artist on Cablevision Battleground Arts Center Showcase. In addition to her interests in piano, Laurissa is an avid skier. She also enjoys reading, swimming, tennis, and bicycling. Laurissa's academic interests are science and mathematics and she is the co-captain of the school math team.

Laurissa Yee is a winner in the 2003 Fifth Annual Andrew De Grado Piano Competition in the soloist category with her performance of the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 in C-sharp Minor by Liszt.