James Lee III

James Lee III is a leading African American composer, with works performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and other major ensembles in the U.S. and abroad. Lee is also an important educator. Lee was born in St. Joseph, Michigan, in 1975. His childhood was shaped, including musically, by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and as a composer, he has had a long affinity for choral music. Lee began taking piano lessons at 12 and made rapid progress, soon taking up the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54. Lee attended the Andrews Academy at the Seventh-Day Adventist-affiliated Andrews Academy at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, winning talent shows and several young composer awards. Fascinated by composition, he began to study scores by Respighi, Messiaen, and John Adams on his own initiative. Lee enrolled at Andrews University as a piano student but transferred to the University of Michigan, earning an undergraduate degree in piano performance and then switching to composition. In that field, he earned master's and doctoral degrees at Michigan, studying with William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, and Michael Daugherty. In 2001, Lee's Papa Lapa was named a winner in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Emerging African American Composers Competition and was performed by the orchestra. Lee held fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, where he studied with Osvaldo Golijov, Augusta Read Thomas, and Kaija Saariaho, among others, and at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After finishing his education, Lee became a professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he remains on the faculty. A major breakthrough for Lee came in 2006 when, after he met with National Symphony Orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin, Lee's 14-minute orchestral work Beyond Rivers of Vision was programmed by the orchestra. It has since been performed by the Detroit Symphony as well. Other Lee works with performances by multiple American orchestras include Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula, co-commissioned by the Sphinx Organization and premiered by the New World Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas and then performed by the Cincinnati and Grand Rapids Symphonies. The work's renown has continued to spread; in 2019-2020, it was performed by the Louisiana Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Lee's works have been programmed by such conductors as Marin Alsop, Juanjo Mena, and Thomas Wilkins. Piano, vocal, and chamber works by Lee have also been widely performed; his Piano Trio No. 2 ("Temple Visions") was played by the Montrose Trio in many cities. The 2021-2022 season saw a host of Lee premieres, including those of Amer'ican (the Detroit Symphony and the Orlando Philharmonic), the piano trio Tones of Clay (at Tanglewood), and the orchestral works Emotive Transformations (the St. Louis Symphony) and Freedom's Genuine Dawn (the Baltimore Symphony). Recordings of Lee's work include Alkebulan's Son: The Piano Works of James Lee III (by Rochelle Sennet on the Albany label in 2014) and Voyages: Orchestral Music of James Lee III (with conductor Marin Alsop leading the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, in 2022).
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