Dongryul Lee’s music is deeply oriented around acoustical phenomena and virtuosic classical performance practice. He seeks to write music that creates profound aural experiences with both dramaturgy and pathos. Lee finds inspirations in spiritual, literary, and scientific elements, encompassing a diverse range of topics from Borgesian poetics to Number Theory. His compositions have been performed by ensembles such as the Avanti!, Contemporanea, Jupiter, MIVOS, Callithumpian Consort, GMCL, S.E.M., Wellesley Conference Ensemble, Paramirabo, and Illinois Modern Ensemble. He was awarded the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship in 2020; the third prize in the first Bartók World Competition in Budapest, November 2018; the Presser Foundation Award, which will support the performance of Unending Rose with Kairos quartett (Berlin, 2019–2020); the Special Prize Piero Pezzé in the Composition Competition Città di Udine (Italy, 2018); and Second Prize in the 3rd GMCL Competition (Portugal, 2017). His dissertation research on virtual bells realized by using the Finite Element Method will be presented at the IRCAM Forum Workshop in Montreal in April 2020. His Quasi una macchina was performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble (New York City), the Callithumpian Consort (Boston), the GMCL (Lisbon); his Parastrata has been performed in four different cities in Europe and North America.
Lee holds degrees in computer science (BS) and music composition (BM) from Yonsei University and the Eastman School respectively. His primary composition teachers include Reynold Tharp, Heinrich Taube, Stephen Taylor, Erin Gee, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, David Liptak, and Tae-hoon Kim. He studied conducting with Brad Lubman and Mark Davis Scatterday and attended master classes led by Jukka Tiensuu, Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, Oliver Knussen, Julian Anderson, and Joshua Fineberg; and seminars by Tristan Murail, Mario Davidovsky, Ben Johnston, and Helmut Lachenmann. He was a lecturer and research assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned a DMA degree with his dissertation on virtual bells and the Finite Element Method. Upcoming projects include a new work commissioned by the Callithumpian Consortto be performed during SICPP 2020 and the Callithumpian season 2020-2021 in Boston. Lee will serve as the 2020-21 Postdoctoral Researcher for the University of Chicago's Center for Contemporary Compositionbeginning in Fall 2020.