Damon Lee(V)
- Composer
- Music Department
Damon Thomas Lee (b. 1975 in Lansing, Michigan), composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and audiovisual, multimedia works, studied at the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University with David Liptak, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Robert Morris, Roberto Sierrra, and Steven Stucky before going to Tokyo to complete doctoral research on Japanese Film-Music. Moving to Germany thereafter was crucial to Lee's development as a composer. After receiving a Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-considered the "Rhodes Scholarship" of Germany-he was able to work as a research fellow with Thomas A. Troge, Sandeep Bhagwati and Wolfgang Rihm, experts in music technology, intermedia and instrumental composition. He composed and taught at various institutions in Europe serving as: 2014 artist-in-residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers (Sweden) and KlangRaumKrems Minoritenkirche in Krems an der Donau (Austria); guest artist at The Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) Institute for Music & Acoustics, Karlsruhe; lecturer of Music Informatics at the University of Music Karlsruhe, the first department of its kind and recipient of one of Deutsche Bank's "365 Orte im Land der Ideen" prizes; and lecturer in the "international and world-leading" ranked department of Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield, England.
He maintains close ties with the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe where he teaches masterclasses in film-scoring and creative sound-design. By way of resumptions of support from the the Humboldt Foundation, has also been artist-in-residence at the same institution. His audiovisual, concert and collaborative works have been performed and screened by leading groups like the Ensemble Modern and institutions like the Aspen Music Festival, ZKM, the International Münchner Filmwochen, the British Film Institute, and Kings Place of London; Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra Augusta; many of these projects feature Damon as the creator of both music and picture. By far the works with the most resonance internationally are his sound designs made in collaboration with visual artist Lida Abdul. These have been exhibited extensively at venues like the São Paulo Biennial; the Moscow Biennial; the Sharjah Biennial; the Göteborg Biennial; the Musée National Pablo Picasso La Guerre et la Paix; the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny; the Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice; Art Basel; Aargauer Kunsthaus; and the Ausstellungshalle zeitgenoessische Kunst Muenster, among others. A recently finished work in this domain, What We Have Overlooked (2011), exhibited at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, considered the leading exhibition in the world for contemporary art, and the most recent, What is Still Left to Experience (2012), exhibited both in Lisbon and Paris.
Honors and prizes for his artistic and academic activities include: a "Landesgraduiertenförderungspreise" for electroacoustic composition from the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany; two ASCAP Plus Awards; two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards for the orchestral works Bending Light and Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra; the Brian Israel Prize for invisible cities; First Prize from the Americas Vocal Ensemble's choral music competition for La exclamación; and First Prize from the Museum in the Community for his first String Quartet entitled Visions. Most recently, he won the Wright State University Horn Festival Composition Contest and was a semi-finalist for the American Prize (orchestra, professional division). In 1993, he won his first composition award as a high school student (the Oberlin College International Composition Competition) for the large ensemble work The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.
He maintains close ties with the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe where he teaches masterclasses in film-scoring and creative sound-design. By way of resumptions of support from the the Humboldt Foundation, has also been artist-in-residence at the same institution. His audiovisual, concert and collaborative works have been performed and screened by leading groups like the Ensemble Modern and institutions like the Aspen Music Festival, ZKM, the International Münchner Filmwochen, the British Film Institute, and Kings Place of London; Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra Augusta; many of these projects feature Damon as the creator of both music and picture. By far the works with the most resonance internationally are his sound designs made in collaboration with visual artist Lida Abdul. These have been exhibited extensively at venues like the São Paulo Biennial; the Moscow Biennial; the Sharjah Biennial; the Göteborg Biennial; the Musée National Pablo Picasso La Guerre et la Paix; the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny; the Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice; Art Basel; Aargauer Kunsthaus; and the Ausstellungshalle zeitgenoessische Kunst Muenster, among others. A recently finished work in this domain, What We Have Overlooked (2011), exhibited at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, considered the leading exhibition in the world for contemporary art, and the most recent, What is Still Left to Experience (2012), exhibited both in Lisbon and Paris.
Honors and prizes for his artistic and academic activities include: a "Landesgraduiertenförderungspreise" for electroacoustic composition from the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany; two ASCAP Plus Awards; two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards for the orchestral works Bending Light and Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra; the Brian Israel Prize for invisible cities; First Prize from the Americas Vocal Ensemble's choral music competition for La exclamación; and First Prize from the Museum in the Community for his first String Quartet entitled Visions. Most recently, he won the Wright State University Horn Festival Composition Contest and was a semi-finalist for the American Prize (orchestra, professional division). In 1993, he won his first composition award as a high school student (the Oberlin College International Composition Competition) for the large ensemble work The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.