Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945.   He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966.  After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University.  He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990.

 

To date Mr. Lee has composed more than 200 works: nine symphonies, fifteen concertos for various solo instruments, eighteen string quartets, a 100-minute two-act chamber opera “The Inman Diaries,” sixty-plus choral works and song cycles, and tons of solo and chamber works. 

 

His music has received many awards, among them the Rome Prize Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts Composers Fellowships, two Massachusetts Artists Fellowships, and First Prize at the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards for his String Quartet No. 3 ... "child of Uranus, father of Zeus.”  

 

He has received commissions from many organizations including Amnesty International USA, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the Kronos Quartet, the Manhattan String Quartet, the Lydian String Quartet, the Hawthorne String Quartet, the Formosa Quartet, the Artaria Quartet, Apple Hill Chamber Players, the American Jazz Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Boston Classical Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

 

Ten of his early works originally published by Margun Music Inc. are now available at G. Schirmer Inc./Associated Music Publishers. The rest is self-published under the moniker, Departed Feathers Music - a BMI affiliate. 

 

Compact disk recordings of his music are available on Nonesuch, Koch International Classics, Arsis Audio, MCA Classics, BMOP Sound and GM Recordings.  

 

Self-produced studio recordings of his music are available for digital download @ bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, etc.

 

Photo credit: Kristin Beckwith