 
Pianist Brian Suits embodies a variety of talents. His busy performance
schedule includes work as a soloist, collaborative artist and chamber
musician, but he is also an accomplished improvisational artist, as well as
a composer whose output runs the gamut from serious modern works to jazz
pieces and popular songs. His compositions have been heard in Merkin Hall
and on WQXR and WNYC Radio in New York City. Additionally, Mr. Suits was a
finalist in the 1995 Schirmer Music Young Composer¹s Competition, and in the
1997 Renée Fisher Foundation Composer Awards. As pianist, he was a finalist
in the 1999 Simone Belsky piano competition. Suits has performed concerti
with both the Jupiter Symphony under the direction of Jens Nygaard, and the
Sejong Soloists under the direction of Hyo Kang. Additionally, Suits
performed in October of this year as piano soloist and conductor with the 21
Chamber Orchestra in Taejeon, Korea, where he has been invited back for an
encore performance in June of 2001. Suits has recorded a set of 23 CDs for Dong-Hwa Music Publishers,
released in Korea in 1995; included are Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven piano
sonatas and Czerny etudes. He is seen often on the concert stage with his
wife, violinist Kyung Sun Lee. They have recorded two CDs together: the
first presents music of Prokofiev, Debussy, and Bartók, and the second,
released in December of 1997, music of Saint-Saëns, Godard,
Chausson, Gershwin, Achron, and Suits himself. The duo¹s first CD, released by
Sung-Eum Records in the spring of 1993, received outstanding reviews from
both Strad and Fanfare magazines.
In 1990 Suits joined the music faculty at Yale University, where he coaches singers in the art song repertoire and teaches a course for pianists
in the art of vocal accompaniment. He and his wife reside in New York City
with their daughter, Amy.
Words of praise for Brian Suits:
³Suits is a pianist whose technique and instrumental mastery go quite a bit
beyond that of the average concert pianist. He manifested this with his
beautiful coloring of Charles Tomlinson Griffes¹ The White Peacock¹ and the
lively Preludes for Piano by George Gershwin. He displayed some fine shading
of tone in the second of these.²
The Lakeville Journal
³Mr. Suits made a very fine impression; he can handle the difficult songs
with unruffled finesse and unusual control of dynamics, and he played with
smart rhythm throughout.²
The New York Times
³That Suits¹ piece, itself owing quite a bit to Bartók, could follow the
Hungarian master and maintain its own identity bodes well both for the
composition and its performance.²
Strad
³Suits played with a penetrating clarity, a strong sense of style and a
technical supremacy that conquered all difficulties with unruffled ease.²
The Miami Herald
³Nygaard also manages to garner the services of excellent soloists, and so
he did for the concert under review. The Mozart concerto was stylishly
rendered by pianist Brian Suits, who also supplied his own engaging
cadenzas.²
New York Concert Review Inc.
³Kyung Sun Lee and her pianist/husband provide one of the most penetrating
debut CDs I have heard in a long time.²
Fanfare
³Suits¹ piano work and emcee-ing, however, was the element that brought the
trio together. Suits played with a delicacy that did great justice to the
music, from the bright boldness of Gershwin Preludes to the measured-jazz
influence of William Bolcom¹s Graceful Ghost Rag.¹ As much a rhythm player
as a pianist, Suits drove the performance with the ear of experience that
one would not expect in an artist so young.²
The Palm Beach Post
³Meticulous, authoritative pianism...An interpretation of exceptional
artistry.²
Strad
³Suits carried the brunt of the evening with untiring pianistic skills. His
interpretation of Griffes¹ The White Peacock¹ was overlaid with colorful,
impressionistic give-and take. He provided yet another contrast as he
reveled in the jazz syncopations of Gershwin's Three Preludes for Piano.²
The Berkshire Eagle
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