Bio
D.M.A. Boston University
M.M., New England Conservatory
BMus., Royal Academy of Music, London/King's College
Violinist Joo-Mee Lee has taken on several roles in the Department of Music at Stanford University since the fall of 2014. She served as director of the Stanford New Ensemble. As a Lecturer, she teaches courses on Introductory Violin and Professional Development in Music, and also gives individual lessons. She has worked closely with the Stanford Symphony and Philharmonia, and has overseen the annual Concerto Competition.
Previously, Lee served as an artist-in-residence and violin faculty at the University of Denver and at Colorado College. She also taught at Brandeis University, and was a sought-after teacher at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Lee earned her Doctor of Musical Arts from Boston University where she was a Roman Totenberg Scholarship recipient. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled An Analytical Study of Three String Quartets of Bernard Rands.
As a young musician, Lee was chosen to represent South Korea for the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, which performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Amsterdam Concertgebouw. She was a founding member of the Tonos String Quartet which won New England Conservatory’s Honor’s Quartet position. Her quartet took part in the Bank of America Celebrity Series with Rob Capilow, and performed live on Boston's WGBH radio among other concert venues throughout New England. The quartet was invited by the Joong-Ang Daily Newspaper to give a recital at Hoam Art Hall in Seoul, Korea.
Lee has been invited to various music festivals including Aspen, Banff, and Sarasota where she performed solo and chamber recitals. While she was in graduate school, she won a position in the DaVinci Quartet and toured throughout the United States, giving concerts and masterclasses. Concurrently, she won a position in the Colorado Springs Symphony (now Philharmonic), and became a tenured member.
As an avid new music advocate, Lee gave world premieres of chamber music and solo works by many contemporary composers. Among the composers with whom she has closely collaborated are Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas, Samuel Adler, and Jennifer Higdon.