Kristin Lee

A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique.

An accomplished chamber musician and a concerto soloist, Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She is also the concertmaster of the Metropolis Ensemble, with whom she premièred Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, which appears on Fung’s CD Dreamscapes (Naxos) and which won the 2013 Juno Award. Other awards include the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation.

Born in Seoul, Lee began studying violin at 5, and later moved to the US to continue her studies under Sonja Foster. In 1997 she entered The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division, and in 2000 was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman after he heard her perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony Orchestra.

Lee is a member of the faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and the co-founder and artistic director of Emerald City Music, a chamber music series based out in Seattle. She has also served on the faculties of the LG Chamber Music School in Seoul, El Sistema’s chamber music festival in Caracas, and the Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival.