Born in then British–Hongkong, Angus Lee (b. 1992) is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. Named Young Music Maker by the RTHK in 2012, Lee’s dynamic and engaging performances have earned him critical acclaims local and abroad at major music festivals including Beijing Music Festival (CN), Ciclo de Música Contemporánea de Oviedo (ES), Hong Kong Arts Festival, Shanghai New Music Week (CN), Taiwan Hong Kong Week, Tongyeong International Music Festival (KR), Lucerne Festival (CH) and New Vision Arts Festival (HK). Lee is also a founding member of the Hongkong-based NOVA Ensemble, a collective of distinguished local young musicians. From 2018 - 19, he also founded and directed the ensemble’s PRISM Chamber Music Festival initiative. 

Supported by the Aedas Scholarship and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Music & Dance Fund, Lee’s formative years were spent at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (2010 – 14) and the Royal Academy of Music in London (2014 – 16), where he completed his studies with highest honours. His principle teachers included Tim Wilson and Olivier Nowak (musicians of Hong Kong Philharmonic), Samuel Coles (principal flute, Philharmonia Orchestra), Kate Hill (musician of English Chamber Orchestra), and Patricia Morris (former principal piccolo, BBC Symphony Orchestra). He has also worked with some of the most prominent performers of the instrument in workshop / masterclass settings, including William Bennett, Emily Beynon, Dieter Flury, Susan Milan and Emmanuel Pahud.

Orchestral playing played an essential role in Lee’s musical upbringing. As a student, Lee has performed under some of the most iconic conductors today, including Lorin Maazel and Marin Alsop (Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem), Sir Trevor Pinnock (Mozart’s ‘Haffner’ Symphony), Christian Thielemann (Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung), and Vladimir Jurowski (Stravinsky’s Symphony of Wind Instruments). To further his orchestral training, he has also enrolled in the Asian Youth Orchestra for two summers (2011, 12), performing major symphonic works by Berlioz, Mahler and Rachmaninov.

Considered a specialist in the field of new music performance and interpretation, Lee received his training at the London Sinfonietta Academy (2016) and the prestigious Lucerne Festival Academy (2013, 15, 16) with musicians of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, partaking in regional and world premiere of works by leading composers, including Dieter Ammann (violin concerto unbalanced instability, 2013), György Kurtág (Petite musique solennelle en hommage à Pierre Boulez 90, 2015), Tod Machover (A Symphony for Lucerne, 2015), Olga Neuwirth (percussion concerto Trurliade – Zone Zero, 2016), and Wolfgang Rihm (Gruß-Moment, 2015). Most significantly, Lee was nominated as soloist at Lucerne Festival Academy founder Pierre Boulez’s 90th Birthday Celebration Concert series in 2015, performing Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe... Originel). He was invited to reprise the performance in Easter 2016 at the composer’s memorial concert, with the Lucerne Festival Alumni Orchestra under Matthias Pintscher.

Lee has joined the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble since returning to Hongkong in 2016, presenting the regional premieres of works by Toshio Hosokawa (opera Matsukaze, 2016), Brett Dean (Carlo, 2017), Du Yun (opera Angel’s Bone, 2018), and Unsuk Chin (Double Concerto & Gougalon, 2018) and Chan Hing-yan (concerto Sonic Affairs, 2018; operas Ghost Love, 2018; Heart of Coral, rev. 2022; Kungfood, 2023) locally and on tour. He has also led the Ensemble as conductor and composer in premièring his own works, including APOCRYPHA (2018) for five instruments, Lapsus memoriae X — improvvisazioni su tre frammenti narrati (2022) for ensemble, fixed media, and spatialised percussionists, as well as the opera Chasing Waterfalls (2022). As part of the Ensemble’s ongoing chamber music series «The Listening Room», he has also performed the regional premières of recent solo flute works by Michael Jarrell and Matthias Pintscher.

Lee is regularly invited to curate and perform in solo and chamber recitals, including Tai Kwun’s «Laundry Steps» lunchtime concerts (2019, 2020) with the NOVA Ensemble, the online recital series «Tom Lee Live» (2020 & 2021), CityU Arts Festival (2021), as well as the Leisure & Cultural Services Department’s «Our Music Talents» (2018) and «City Hall Virtuosi» (2023) series. At the invitation of composer Prof. Chan Hing-yan, Lee also inaugurated HKU MUSE’s «Around Twilight» (2021) lecture demonstration series at the height of COVID-19 pandemic, performing and discussing Luciano Berio’s seminal work, Sequenza I for solo flute. He has given masterclasses at the HKU Music Department’s advanced music performance course (directed by Prof. Giorgio Biancorosso) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Cosmopolis Festival, as well as adjudicating at the 74th Hong Kong Schools Music Festival’s flute competitions.

A holder of the special LRAM certification conferred by the Royal Academy of Music, Lee currently serves as assistant lecturer at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Music, directing the Performance Study course, teaching flute performance, chamber music, and conducting. He is also part-time woodwind chamber music faculty at his alma mater, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Concurrently, he serves as the woodwind faculty of the Lucerne Festival Academy from 2022 - 23.