The double-disc set, Thomas Oboe Lee: Six Concertos, is available for purchase
Born in China in 1945 and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thomas Oboe Lee has lived in the United States since the mid-1960s. As you might I guess from these barest facts of his biography, they make for a rather heady cultural mix. As the composer himself disarmingly puts it: "The first thing people say after hearing my music is, 'Your stuff is all over the place. I hear jazz, I hear samba, I hear neoclassical and romantic things...'"
In this new recording of six of Lee's concertos, you hear all of that and more.
Thomas Oboe Lee weaves many influences into a distinctive artistic voice. Born in China to nightclub singers, he spent his teenage years living in Brazil, then moved to the United States to study composing at Harvard and the New England Conservatory. Along the way he picked up the sounds not just of bossa nova and samba, but the cool American jazz of Davis, Coltrane and Evans.
With these two recent releases from BMOP/sound we get an attractive bouquet of concertos from a couple of America's most highly regarded contemporary composers, Thomas Oboe Lee (b. 1945) and Paul Moravec (b. 1957, see below). Lee was born in China but left there with his family in 1949, spending ten years in Hong Kong and another six in Brazil. He then emigrated to the United States in 1966, where he pursued extensive musical studies, graduating from Harvard in 1981. He's received a number of outstanding awards, and now teaches at Boston College.
The ever-intrepid Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) continues to enlighten listeners with more composer-centric album releases by its label BMOP/sound.
Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music recordings, BMOP/sound today announced the release of two new albums scheduled to drop January 8, 2013 – Paul Moravec: Northern Lights Electric featuring performances by David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz and Thomas Oboe Lee: Six Concertos featuring jazz-inflected collaborations with a plethora of today’s top soloists.
