Angus Lee (b. 1992) is a conductor with specialist focus in new music performance. Supported by the Aedas Scholarship and Hong Kong Jockey Club Music & Dance fund, Lee undertook his conducting studies primarily with Alan Cumberland (HKAPA) and Sian Edwards (RAM). He also benefited from brief studies with Charles Peebles and James Judd at the Orkney Conductors Course and the Asian Youth Orchestra Conducting Seminar.
Lee has conducted numerous concerts organised by the Hong Kong Composers’ Guild, including at the Guild’s Musicarama (2017) and Hong Kong Contemporary Music Festival, performing works by prominent local composers including Kai-young Chan, Victor Chan, Chris Hung and Galison Lau. In 2021, Lee has also led the NOVA Ensemble in performing in the Guild’s New Generation competition (where he was a finalist in 2012), presenting and premiering works by contestant young composers. In addition, over the past few years, Lee has worked closely with local composer Daniel Lo, premièring his Non-sequitur (II) (2020) for ensemble, the multimedia theatre work The Happy Family (2021), and Songs of Virotopia (2022), a song cycle for ensemble and baritone based on the works of Hongkong poet, Ho Fuk-yan. In 2022, at the invitation of the RTHK, Lee has also curated a special programme featuring the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, performing and recording works by John Adams, Beat Furrer and Nico Muhly.
In 2020, Lee was selected as one of the conducting fellows at the inaugural edition of Ensemble Modern’s International Composer & Conductor Seminar. Under the supervision and guidance of conductor Stefan Asbury, Lee studied, prepared and rehearsed the new pieces Gewalt der Musik (2022) and Panorama (2022) by composers Pyotr Peszat and Philipp Krebs with Ensemble Modern. Multiple delays due to unforeseen circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic notwithstanding, the première concert took place at the 2023 edition of festival cresc... [Biennale for Current Music Frankfurt Rhein main]. Most recently, he made his debut at the 51st Hong Kong Arts Festival, working closely with the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa in leading the Asian première of his ‘chamber music theatre’ piece, The Book of Water (2021 - 22).
In June 2023, Lee will make his debut with the renowned Ensemble Musikfabrik (De) at the International Young Composers Academy Ticino (founded by composer Oscar Bianchi), where he would lead première 10 new works by course participants. In late 2023, Lee will lead NOVA Ensemble in one of four concerts celebrating the Hong Kong Composers’ Guild’s 40th founding anniversary.
Lee is also frequently the conductor of his own music. As part of West Kowloon District’s special exchange project with the Taiwanese group Studio Acht, for example, Lee not only conducted works by composers Yu-hsin Chang, Chia-ying Lin, Wei-chih Liu, Daniel Lo, but also his Apocrypha (2018). In 2022, too, he personally led the rehearsals and première of his first opera Chasing Waterfalls at Semperoper Dresden and its subsequent tour to Hong Kong’s New Vision Arts Festival to critical acclaim
Lee is currently assistant lecturer at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Music. He directs the Department’s Performance Study programme, in which he teaches flute performance, chamber music and conducting.