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As part of their #WHAT2020SOUNDSLIKE project, the new music piano duo HOCKET commissioned Lee to write a miniature work to be premiered online as a performance video. In commissioning 50 composers to write miniatures for their project, HOCKET aims to give composers a platform to voice their responses to the momentuous events of this year. Lee’s miniature, Dog Daze is one minute long and features piano, toy piano, and melodica in a lazy, plodding groove. Watch the video at the link below.

Invited for a residency by the Hermitage’s National Curatorial Council, Lee will spend four weeks over the next two years at the Hermitage Artist Retreat working on new projects and sharing his work with community members and fellow artists. Located on the Gulf near Sarasota, artists work in historic beach houses on the water’s edge.

Lee has been named one of the six Fellows who will participate in CULTIVATE 2020, Copland House’s acclaimed, annual emerging composers institute. An all-scholarship, intensive creative workshop and mentoring program, CULTIVATE will take place this year between June 8 and 15 at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in northern Westchester County, NY. The six Fellows will each be commissioned to write a new composition that serves as the focus of an intensive week of collective and individual daily rehearsals and workshops with Director Derek Bermel and Principal and Guest Artists from Music from Copland House. CULTIVATE concludes with a June 14 concert on Copland House’s mainstage performance series featuring the World Premieres of all the new works. A second concert brings them to Manhattan for their New York City Premieres, as part of Music from Copland House’s inaugural series at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, telecast by CUNY-TV.

Lee was nominated for consideration to be the Florida State Music Teachers Association’s 2020 Commissioned Composer, and upon submitting a portfolio of compositions, was selected for the award. His commissioned chamber work will be premiered at the 2020 FSMTA Conference, and will then be considered for recognition at the national level. A panel of composers will evaluate states’ commissioned compositions in order to select the MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year.

The world premiere of Scott Lee’s striking TMC-commissioned work “Slack Tide,” a contemporary tone poem, evoked the moments when the tide is coming neither in nor out, moments both of calm and maximum tension. With its harbingers and nuances of movement, one sensed and felt the creatures of the sea lurking, floating and darting through the waters. We’ve never heard anything like it and, along with Lee’s wildly responsive audience, loved it.

Slack Tide, for symphonic brass ensemble and percussion, was premiered in Seiji Ozawa Hall as part of the Brass and Percussion Extravaganza Concert. The piece was commissioned by Tanglewood following Lee’s time as a Composition Fellow during the summer of 2018.

The Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra has named Lee Composer in Residence for their 2019-20 season. The Residency includes a commission for the ensemble to be premiered in May 2020 along with multiple visits to work with the students.

Lee has been appointed Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida School of Music. He will begin teaching in the Fall of 2019, giving composition lessons as well as teaching courses in composition and electronic music.

Lee has been commmissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center to write a piece for large brass ensemble and percussion, to be premiered at the festival in the Summer of 2019. Lee was chosen was one of three commissioned Composition Fellows from this year’s festival.

Lee has been offered the position of Lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Music for the upcoming academic year. He will be teaching classes in both music theory and ear training, primarily at the sophomore level.