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Rome International Piano Competition

The Rome International Piano Competition was an international multi-instrument youth competition held at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome from November 14 through 20, 2032. Seventeen-year-old Minjae Lee won the Piano Senior Division, received the Special Award for Outstanding Interpretation of Debussy, and placed second in the Overall Grand Prize. The competition also marked his first meeting with pianist and judge Jacob Keller.

Overview

The seven-day competition brought youth performers from several countries and instrumental divisions to Rome. Minjae entered the Senior Piano Division from Tianjin, China. The division was open to competitors from sixteen through eighteen years old. His program comprised Claude Debussy’s ‘’L’Isle joyeuse’’ and Frédéric Chopin’s ‘’Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23’‘.

Minjae traveled with his parents, Joon-Ho Lee and Nari Lee, his sister Minseo Lee, and his girlfriend Minh Tran. The family arrived before the competition with a short buffer for travel recovery, orientation, and rehearsal. Jacob, then twenty-five, served on the judging panel, with Elliot Landry accompanying him throughout the week.

Background and Professional Context

Minjae had trained at The Tianjin Juilliard School and entered Rome as an accomplished pianist whose speech, movement, stamina, and seizure safety required substantial support. The competition was his first established international performance milestone at this level. It also placed him before Jacob, one of the musicians he most admired.

The Lee family planned the trip around Minjae’s known cerebral palsy, autism, POTS, drug-resistant epilepsy, developmental disability, and severe chronic fatigue. They did not yet have the later Lennox-Gastaut syndrome diagnosis or a complete explanation for the severity of his post-exertional health decline. Their planning therefore relied on Minjae’s established seizure patterns, observable warning signs, daily care needs, and the accommodations that had already allowed him to study and perform.

Preparation and Production

The Lees and Minh reached Rome one to two days before the competition opened. The buffer allowed Minjae to recover from international travel, learn the venue routes, and rehearse without adding a full competition schedule on the day of arrival.

Staff arranged a shortened warm-up and a partitioned rehearsal area away from the heaviest ensemble noise. During his first rehearsal, Minjae transferred from his wheelchair to the piano bench and worked through the same Debussy and Chopin program he would perform in the division final. When Minh asked how the piano felt, he answered, “Good. Like… home.”

On the morning of the Senior Piano final, Nari, Minseo, and Minh helped Minjae bathe, dress, and groom himself after nocturnal seizures had left him unusually fatigued. The assistance was part of his ordinary daily-living support and allowed him to conserve his limited stamina for the performance.

Venue and Program

The competition used the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, a multi-hall complex at Viale Pietro de Coubertin in Rome. Rehearsal and recording studios supported competition preparation. The Senior Piano final took place in Sala Petrassi, a 673-seat hall whose movable acoustic curtains allowed the room to be adjusted for musical performances.

The final Overall Grand Prize ceremony took place in Sala Santa Cecilia, the complex’s 2,744-seat main concert hall. The larger room accommodated the competition’s multi-instrument gala and the presentation of the overall results.

Minjae’s Senior Piano program consisted of:

  • Claude Debussy, ‘’L’Isle joyeuse’‘
  • Frédéric Chopin, ‘’Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23’‘

The judges later cited his “unparalleled musical sensitivity, remarkable control of timbre, and emotional maturity well beyond his years.”

Performance

Minh brought Minjae to the piano and assisted with the wheelchair-to-bench transfer. Before he began, Minjae recognized Jacob at the judges’ table.

Minjae completed both works despite hand spasms, severe fatigue, and intermittent warning signs from his body. The performance contained minor extra notes when his pinky spasmed, but he maintained the program’s continuity and interpretive shape. Jacob later argued during deliberations that these technical deviations did not outweigh the artistic merit of the performance and that Minjae should win the division on that merit, not as an accommodation or act of sympathy.

After Minjae came offstage, Joon-Ho told him, “You make me proud. Always.” Minjae began sobbing from the combined emotional and sensory overload. Minh noticed the warning signs of an impending faint and positioned him before he lost consciousness. He recovered with family support and then slept through much of the interval before the category results.

Accessibility and Health Logistics

The venue’s accessible routes and elevators allowed the family to move Minjae between public areas, rehearsal rooms, backstage space, and the halls in his wheelchair. His competition setup included his customized wheelchair and postural harness, assisted transfers to the piano bench, shortened warm-up periods, a partitioned lower-stimulation rehearsal area, and planned rest between obligations.

Minjae communicated through limited speech, Korean and Mandarin, body language, and AAC on his iPad. Minh and the Lee family translated between Korean and English when necessary while preserving time for Minjae to answer for himself. They also managed medications, seizure observation, food, hydration, positioning, dressing, and other daily care throughout the trip.

Those supports were planned production infrastructure. The post-performance faint, the absence seizure during the winners’ photograph, and the additional quiet-room response were unplanned medical events handled by the people who recognized Minjae’s individual warning signs. At the time, neither the family nor competition staff understood those events through the later LGS diagnosis.

Incidents and Disruptions

Minjae’s post-performance faint delayed his participation in the next scheduled activity. The family allowed him to sleep and woke him for the Piano Senior Division results only after he had recovered enough to attend.

During the winners’ photograph after the category results, Minjae had an absence seizure while a photographer continued calling for his attention. Jacob stopped the photographer with, “Shut up. Wait one second.” He did not touch or crowd Minjae; he waited for the seizure to end and said, “There you are,” when Minjae returned to awareness. Elliot then asked whether a quieter room would be better, and the group moved away from the active photo area.

Audience and Reception

Minjae received First Place in the Piano Senior Division and the Special Award for Outstanding Interpretation of Debussy. French pianist Louis Moreau placed second in the division and received the Special Award for Technical Excellence for his performance of Ravel’s ‘’Scarbo’’ from ‘’Gaspard de la nuit’‘. Italian pianist Sofia Rinaldi placed third.

At the final gala in Sala Santa Cecilia later in the week, Louis received First Place and Minjae received Second Place in the Overall Grand Prize across the competition’s instrumental divisions. Recordings and reports of Minjae’s results circulated in China, where his performance trended online.

Immediate Aftermath

The category winners met Jacob after the Piano Senior results. Minjae told him, through Minh’s translation, that Jacob was his hero. Jacob answered that Minjae should continue playing as he had during the competition.

At the hotel, Jacob gave Minjae a card with his personal email address rather than his professional contact and told him, “If you want to send me something—recordings, questions—this will reach me directly.” The exchange created the private line of correspondence from which their later friendship and professional mentorship developed.

After the family returned to Tianjin, Minjae slept through most of the first weekend except for medications and experienced increased nocturnal seizures and profound fatigue. The escalation continued for weeks and later included a status-epilepticus episode lasting nearly thirty minutes. During the resulting remote review, Logan Weston recognized that Minjae’s childhood drug-resistant epilepsy and developmental history fit the pattern of Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. Johns Hopkins confirmed the diagnosis after the family’s early-2034 move to Baltimore.

Career Consequences

The Rome results established Minjae as an international competition winner. His connection with Jacob continued beyond the event and later developed into artistic mentorship, including Jacob’s production work on Minjae’s debut album, ‘’Still Here’‘.

The post-Rome health crisis also exposed the limits of Minjae’s existing care. It contributed to the Lee family’s decision to pursue specialized treatment in Baltimore, followed by an approvals and preparation process during late 2033 and their physical relocation in early 2034.

Recordings and Documentation

Unofficial performance clips circulated online after the competition and contributed to Minjae’s public recognition in China. During Minjae’s later post-Rome hospitalization, Louis organized an online fundraiser to help finance treatment and medical travel to the United States. He used the competition’s professional photograph of Minjae with Jacob on the campaign page, which surpassed $100,000 within hours.

CRATB also helped raise funds for Minjae’s emergency relocation to the United States after his hospitalization.

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