Thomas Oboe Lee

Life

He and his family left Communist China in 1949, and lived in Hong Kong until 1959, when he moved to São Paulo, Brazil. He emigrated to the USA in the summer of 1966.

His musical education began in Brazil during the Bossa Nova craze. He performed as a jazz flutist with many illustrious Brazilian musicians, including the singer/songwriter Chico Buarque de Hollanda. He continued his music education in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh, the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University. He has been a professor of music at Boston College since the fall of 1990.

In 1981, he and five other composers from the New England Conservatory formed a composers group called "Composers in Red Sneakers." The group produced a number of successful concerts in the Boston-Cambridge area. Lee left the group in 1986 to live in Italy for a year when he won the 1987 Rome Prize Fellowship.

Lee's music has won many other awards and Fellowships: two Guggenheim Fellowship awards, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowships, the 1985 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, First Prize at the 1983 Friedheim Kennedy Center Awards for his Third String Quartet ... child of Uranus, father of Zeus, and recording grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Works

Lee has composed over a hundred seventy-five works: nine symphonies, twelve string quartets, fourteen concerti for various solo instruments, choral works, song cycles and scores of chamber music. Some of his early works, originally published by Margun Music Inc., have since been transferred to G. Schirmer Inc./Associated Music Publishers. The rest of his portfolio - orchestral, choral, a chamber opera, vocal and chamber music - is self-published under the moniker "Departed Feathers Music." His music has been recorded on Nonesuch, MCA Classics, Koch International Classics, BMG Catalyst, Arsis Audio, BMOP Sound, Northeastern and Gunther Schuller's GM Recordings, Inc. Lee's recordings can also be purchased as digital downloads at iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Napster, and other online distributors.

His most popular work, "Morango ... Almost A Tango," written for and recorded by the Kronos Quartet, has been used in dance by choreographers like Michael Tracy for Pilobolus (dance company), Jiri Kylian for the Netherlands Dance Theater, Danny Rosseel for the Royal Ballet of Flanders, Nicolo Fonte for the Pacific Northwest Ballet and Australian Ballet, Carolyn Carlson for the Cullberg Ballet of Sweden, Olivia Rosenkrantz for Tapage - a tap duo, et al. Additionally, "Morango ..." was used as a sound track for "Call It Sleep" - a documentary on Henry Roth.

Lee has also ventured into the world of opera. His two-act chamber opera, "The Inman Diaries," (libretto by Jesse J. Martin) about the infamous Boston diarist Arthur Crew Inman was produced and premiered in Boston in 2007 by Intermezzo - The New England Chamber Opera Series. His on-going opera-in-progress is "Oscar Wilde ... An Opera in Two Acts."

In the summer of 2010, Mr. Lee embarked on a project to add a visual component to his music. These videos can be viewed on YouTube and Vimeo. Search for Thomas Oboe Lee.

List of works

Recordings