OUR MISSION

To awaken the desire to listen beyond words, to feel, imagine, and connect on a deeper level.

Salon Séance believes listening is fundamental to human existence. As virtual interactions increase, we are losing the tactile experiences that foster deep listening and connect us to our emotions, fueling loneliness, rage, and conflict. Our mission is to awaken the desire to listen beyond words, to feel, imagine, and connect on a deeper level. Through cultural practices that channel shared human emotions, we create interactive experiences that explore the essence of community, connection, and self, envisioning a world where we grieve and celebrate life together as one.

Salon Séance is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

MARI’S STORY

“Growing up ethnically Korean in Japan before attending boarding school in the UK at age 11, I have always lived as an outsider with a sense of void inside me. I have always struggled to feel like I belong. It was when I discovered classical music that I felt understood for the first time. I found myself in the music’s deep emotions—the sadness, the frustration, the emptiness. It was something that gave me a sense of meaning, identity, and a voice that I didn’t have in this world. It became a way of connecting with others beyond what society uses to define who we are.

Salon Séance is my invitation to you to experience that connection by listening deeply to our shared human emotions beyond the surface.“

—Mari Lee, Co-Founder, CEO, and Artistic Director

OUR TEAM

Mari Lee, CEO and Artistic Director

Mari Lee is an artist dedicated to engaging her audience by instilling curiosity for music. A violinist, producer, and entrepreneur, she aims to bridge the gap between audiences, performers, and composers.

  • Mari has performed internationally at the South Bank Centre, Wigmore Hall, Le Festival de Radio France Montpellier, Philharmonie de Paris, and Carnegie Hall. Praised as “extremely impressive” by the Strad Magazine, she has been invited to renowned festivals including Ravinia, Verbier, and Marlboro.

    Mari is co-founder of Salon Séance, a production company creating experiential concerts. Salon Séance has won multiple awards including Tarisio’s Young Artists Grants and the Britten-Pears Foundation’s Britten Award.

    Mari’s commitment to audience engagement has taken her beyond traditional concert venues and communities. During her fellowship at Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, she created interactive performances for the incarcerated, homeless, developmentally disabled populations, and Title-1 schools in New York.

    Highlights from past seasons include performances with Salon Séance at Schubert Club and The Crypt Sessions; a collaboration with dancers from BodyVox; multimedia concerts at CreArt; and performances of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire with lighting and theater at Carnegie Hall.

    Mari is a graduate of The Yehudi Menuhin School, New England Conservatory of Music, and Universität der Künste Berlin, where she studied with Natasha Boyarsky, Miriam Fried, and Nora Chastain. She is an alumna of Beth Morrison’s Producer Academy and is a member of CIPA (Creative & Independent Producer Alliance).

    She plays on 1863 Jean-Baptiste Villaume

    www.marileeprojects.com

Sam Paris, COO and Creative Strategist

Sam Paris joins as COO and Creative Strategist after five years of working as an advisor for Salon Séance. He has worked in a variety of roles in the classical music industry including as a presenter, agent, critic, and producer.

  • Previously he was the Manager of Learning Initiatives for the Tanglewood Learning Institute - an experimental, interdisciplinary, and participatory presentation branch of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Before moving to Boston, Sam was the Associate Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival. As a former New Yorker, he reviewed upwards of 120 concerts a year in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Park Avenue Armory to the Chicago Symphony, while also worked for Colbert Artists Management. He is an advocate for new music and interdisciplinary performances.

Simon Angseop Lee, Co-Founder and Researcher

Simon Lee is an independent researcher and translator, based in Tokyo. He studied philosophy at University College London and intellectual history at Queen Mary University of London.

  • Most recently, he was invited to give a presentation entitled ‘Tracing Shifts in the Meaning of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Labour on the Island of Sakhalin’ at the Association for Asian Studies’ annual conference in 2022. His current research is on the history of microfinance in imperial and post-imperial Japan.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Yee-Ping Wu, Board President

Luigi Crevoisier, Treasurer

Joanna Lee Lin, Secretary

COLLABORATORS

Salon Séance curates a team of collaborators for each project.

  • Nile Assata Harris (2022)

    David Greenspan (2021)

    Susannah Perkins (2021)

    Nadja Hoyer-Booth (2020)

    Philip Stoddard (2019)

    Sagine Valla (2018-2019)

  • Guillermo Laporta, Lighting design (2023)

    John Gasper, Sound design (2022-)

    Michael O’Connor, Lighting design (2021)

  • Jay Stull (2020-)

    Mikael Södersten (2018-2020)

  • Lisa Schatz (2020)

  • Johnny G. Lloyd (2019-2021)

    Noelle P. Wilson (2018-2019)

  • Mihai Marica (2017-)

    Christine Lee (2021)

    Michael Katz (2021)

    Vashti Hunter (2015)

    Tony Rymer (2015)

  • Yoonah Kim (2022)

    Mingzhe Wang (2021)

    Maxim Conrad (2015)

  • Sahun Sam Hong (2023)

    Henry Kramer (2022-)

    David Fung (2017-)

    Julia Hamos (2018-2019)

    Daniel Schlosberg (2019)

    Andreea Mut (2018)

    Yannick Rafalimanana (2015)

  • Tanner Menees (2022)

    Tanner Menees (2022)

    Ayane Kozasa (2018-2019)

    Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu (2019)

    Karolina Errera (2015)

    Vicki Powell (2015)

  • Mari Lee (2015-present)

    Emilie-Anne Gendron (2019-2022)

    Rebecca Anderson (2018)

    Brandon Garbot (2018)

    Yoojin Jang (2019)

    Maia Cabeza (2015)

  • Lucy Fitz Gibbon (2020)