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The Singaporean bass-baritone, John Lee, was a pianist from the age of 4, performed in four ABRSM Top Scorers’ Concerts (Singapore) for his Grade 5, 7, and 8 piano examinations, and his Grade 6 cello examination, after which he gained his ATCL and LTCL piano diplomas with distinction. His formative musical experiences include performing at Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House as Principal Cellist of the Raffles Institution String Ensemble, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the Esplanade Concert Hall, and piano competitions in Tokyo, Bangkok, and Singapore.
John Lee received a first class degree in Music from St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Schola Cantorum of Oxford was central to his experience there; he was Chairman in his second year and Conducting Scholar in his third. He also sung with other leading Oxford ensembles including the of Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford, Choir of New College, Oxford, Choir of Queen’s College, and Choir of Somerville College, Oxford. Aside from singing, he was active as a conductor and composer; he trained as a choral conductor as part of the Voces Academy Musical Leadership Programme, and his piece Nunc Dimittis received its world premiere by the award-winning Raffles Singers (Singapore). It has since been performed at the 11th World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona, Spain. More recently, he joined The Sixteen and Genesis Sixteen in the world premiere of MacMillan’s Symphony No. 5 ‘Le Grand Inconnu’ at Usher Hall (Edinburgh) and the Barbican.
John Lee was a semi-finalist at the International Handel Singing Competition 2020 and made his Wigmore Hall debut as Marte in George Frideric Handel's Parnasso in festa for the London Handel Festival later that year. He was a Voces8 Scholar, St Martin’s Voices Fellow, Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) Young Artist, Iford Arts New Generation Artist, and member of Genesis Sixteen. John received his Master of Music degree in Voice Performance with Distinction from the Royal College of Music (RCM), London (2018-2020), where he was the Sheila Saam Memorial Scholar. He owes much to his singing teachers Alison Wells, Justin Lavender and Toh Ban Sheng.
At the RCM, John Lee worked regularly with his coaches Andrew Robinson and John Blakely, as well as with guest coaches Iain Burnside and Roderick Williams. In his final year, with the assistance of English song specialist Stephen Varcoe and the RCM library, John undertook a project to research, transcribe and perform the unpublished songs of Samuel Liddle, for which he was highly commended. He has sung in master-classes with Roderick Williams, Rachel Nicholls, Julian Perkins, and Katie Mitchell.
A lover of early music, John Lee studied lute song with master lutenist Jakob Lindberg and has performed as a soloist in G.F. Handel's Apollo e Dafne (BREMF), J.S. Bach's B Minor Mass (BWV 232) / G.F. Handel's Messiah (Armonico Consort), J.S. Bach's St John Passion (BWV 245) (Choir of Somerville College, Oxford), Ich habe genug (BWV 82) / Peasant (BWV 212) and Coffee (BWV 211) cantatas (New Chamber Opera, Oxford), and numerous J.S. Bach's cantatas (with the RCM Baroque Orchestra, City Music Society, and Oxford Bach Soloists (Director: Tom Hammond-Davies)).
John Lee's operatic roles include Pluto in Il ballo delle ingrate (BREMF), Superintendent Budd in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring (St Peter’s College Opera, Oxford), Martin in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (Oxford Playhouse), Aide in The Tsar Wants His Photograph Taken (UCL Culture, Bloomsbury Theatre), and Sebastian in Toby Young’s Witch! (Faculty of Music, Oxford University). Ensemble work includes Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoe (RCM Opera Studio) and Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (Iford Arts). He has worked with directors Tom Guthrie, Bill Bankes-Jones, and James Hurley. He is currently based in Singapore together with his wife, Paloma. Since December 2020, he studies for his Postgraduate Diploma in Education at National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore (expected graduation in March 2022). |
