News

Providence-based new music ensemble Verdant Vibes has chosen to perform Bottom Heavy from its Call for Scores twice in its upcoming season. The first performance will take place in Boston on April 22, and the second in Providence on April 23.

Lee’s most recent chamber piece, Hurry Up and Wait, was performed at the retreat in Dublin, NH by two members of the MIVOS Quartet, Lauren Cauley and Mariel Roberts, alongside pianist Steve Beck and clarinetist Carlos Cordeiro. Lee participated in the weeklong retreat where he had lessons with Michael Daugherty, D.J. Sparr, and Caroline Mallonée, attended conducting workshops and pedagogy seminars, and performed as part of the chamber choir.

Lee’s newest orchestral work, Vicious Circles was read and recorded by the North Carolina Symphony, conducted by Music Director Grant Llewellyn, alongside a new piece by Yahn Wagner. The reading was the capstone of a fruitful collaboration between the Duke Department of Music and the Symphony.

After Bottom Heavy was awarded an Honorable Mention in ShoutHouse’s Call for Scores, the ensemble performed the piece at the Bitter End in New York City on March 11th alongside works by Alex Burtzos, Will Healy, Jai Issa, and Nuri Hazzard.

Lee has been awarded a 2016 Charles Ives Scholarship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The scholarship of $7500 is given to composition students of great promise. See the press release at the link below.

Lee arranged an entire Valentine’s Day program of soul and funk music for the Portland Symphony Orchestra. The two concerts featured Lyle Divinksy, Sara Hallie Richardson, and Model Airplane on classic love songs such as “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “For Once in My Life.”

The Occasional Symphony commissioned a chamber orchestra version of Janus Antics to perform on their Masquerade concert in December at Church and Company in Baltimore, MD. Audience Members enjoyed complimentary dance lessons, pastries, and drinks as they waltzed to masterful classics from Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Rvel, Saint-Saens, Berg, Webern, and Lee.

The Queens College Percussion Ensemble, led by Michael Lipsey, performed Bottom Heavy at the Aaron Copland School of Music after rehearsing the piece all semester. Find the recording at the link below.

The first and third movements of Liftoff were performed by Nashville’s alt-classical group, chatterbird, after the piece won their 2015 Call For Scores. The performance took place at Club Roar alongside the other Call for Scores winner, David Garner’s Awake, Awake.

The all-male German vocal quintet Amarcord read and recorded Lee’s new work By What Wings along with On the Sea by Sid Richardson as part of a residency at Duke University. The residency was made possible by a collaboration between the Music Department and Duke Performances.