American violinist WAYNE LEE enjoys a prolific career worldwide as a member of two internationally-acclaimed chamber ensembles. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Formosa Quartet, a string quartet that performs extensively in North America, Europe and Asia, with recent and upcoming engagements at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Taipei’s National Concert Hall, and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver. As teaching artists, the Quartet members serve as the faculty string quartet-in-residence for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and are also founders and faculty at the annual Formosa Chamber Music Festival in Taiwan. Since 2008, Mr. Lee has also been a member of the Manhattan Piano Trio, an ensemble acclaimed as "outstanding" by the Washington Post and lauded as "a grand departure from the usual" by the News Herald. In addition to giving performances throughout the United States and Europe, the Trio released an album of Schumann and Chopin trios on the Marquis Classics label in 2010.
Mr. Lee also regularly appears before audiences as a soloist and recitalist. Recent commitments include concerts and recordings with The Knights, festival appearances at Musique de Chambre à Giverny in France and the Olympic Music Festival in Washington State, and concerto performances with the Minnesota Sinfonia. As a recitalist, he has designed and presented several large-scale projects, including performances of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas, the six unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas by Bach, the six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard by Bach, and a cycle of commissioned works inspired by Bach’s B minor Partita. As part of his interest in historical performance practice, he often performs on early instruments with fortepianist Mike Lee, a collaboration that has brought the duo as performance and teaching artists to institutions such as Cornell University and Indiana University.
A dedicated teacher and arts advocate, Mr. Lee currently holds the position of Lecturer of Violin at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has given master classes throughout the United States and Asia and previously served as teaching assistant at the Juilliard School, from which he holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
In addition to his performing and teaching activities, Mr. Lee is co-founder and co-artistic director of the Piedmont Chamber Music Festival, an annual week of chamber music that brings an internationally-acclaimed roster of musicians to the Bay Area every summer. He plays on a 2001 Joseph Curtin violin.
