Paul Wee

Paul Wee has pursued an unusual combination of careers: he is both a concert pianist and a practicing lawyer. As a pianist, he is anything but a dilettante; among his specialties are the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan, among the most difficult in the entire classical repertory. Paul Choon Kiat Wee was born in Australia to parents of Singaporean and Malaysian background. He took up the piano at four and made rapid progress. His concert career began early, and at age 12, he played a concerto at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Wee moved to New York for studies at the Manhattan School of Music with Nina Svetlanova. At that point, he had second thoughts about the rigors of a concert pianist's career. Wee told critic Norman Lebrecht that "I wasn’t sure whether touring from city to city, living out of a suitcase away from family and friends and playing similar programmes night after night would yield the best framework for fostering and enjoying the connection with music that I have always had." He returned to the United Kingdom and enrolled in law studies at Oxford University, earning BA (Jurisprudence) and BCL degrees from Keble College. Wee was, in British parlance, called to the Bar in 1990. Recognized by the Legal 500 law clients' guide as "extremely strategic, knowledgeable about international law, enormously hardworking, and a pleasure to work with," Wee maintains an office at London's Verulam Buildings, specializing in various areas of commercial law including finance, energy, mining and exploration, telecommunications, information technology, manufacturing, and media. Some of his legal industry biographies described him as having given up his pianistic career, but in 2015 and 2016, he gave a pair of recitals at the Alkan Society in London. The second of these was heard by producer Mike Spring, who sent a recording of the concert to Robert von Bahr, owner of the BIS label in Stockholm. The result, in 2019, was a BIS release from Wee of Alkan's Symphony for Solo Piano and Concerto for Solo Piano, difficult works even by Alkan standards. His website biography now states that he "attempts to balance his love for the piano alongside the demands of a busy international career in law."
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