Wen-Pin Hope Lee (李和莆) （1967- ） is a Taiwanese composer. His works comprise a variety of genres, including symphonies, theatre, dance, solo works, chamber music, computer music, and multimedia performance art. In 2004 he began his Taiwan Series of compositions: a body of work inspired by Taiwanese culture, including aboriginal and Hakka melodies, sung texts in Taiwanese, and the ambient sounds of Taiwan locales. Lee is the winner of the 2006 Golden Melody Award for Best Composer of Traditional and Artistic Music and a nominee for the 2007 Golden Melody Award for his recording of his five-act theatre dance piece Hsiahai City God through Water of Mengjia.[1]
Hope Lee resides in Taipei, where he teaches composition at his alma mater, the National Taiwan Normal University. He also serves on the music faculty at the National Taichung University and is active in the leadership of two ensembles in Taipei, the Sonare Symphony Orchestra and Music Dimensions.
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Hope Lee first experiences with music were as a child under the tutelage of pianist Chiu-chin Lai (賴秋鏡). At the age of 17 he began studies in composition and music theory with Prof. Chin-yow Lin (林進祐). He entered the bachelor's program at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) the following year; his teachers were Shing-kwei Tzeng (曾興魁), Mao-shuen Chen (陳茂萱) and Shu-shi Chen (陳樹熙). Upon graduation Lee moved to America for graduate studies in composition and music theory at the Boston University. His teachers in Boston were Lukas Foss, Theodore Antoniou and Marjorie Merryman. Lee was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition in 1999.[1]
Upon his return to Taiwan Lee was appointed to the composition faculty at the National Taiwan Normal University, where he also serves as director of the Digital Media Center Music Interactive Laboratory. He also teaches music at the National Taichung University and the Affiliated Senior High School of NTNU. He is active as the artistic director of the Sonare Symphony Orchestra and as executive of Music Dimensions, an ensemble devoted to the performance of new Taiwanese music. [1]
Recent representative works by Hope Lee include the following composition in the Taiwan Series:[2][3]
In recent years Wen-Pin Hope Lee has turned his attention to collaborative works employing digital arts. Works that have resulted from this include: Association of Raindrops, Transformation and Interaction, a depiction of ecological systems in Taiwan; Dimensions, a visualisation of religious rites using the techniques of digital virtual music theater; The Ghost Arrives!, a music theater piece using digital images; and Fabric Legend from the Taiwanese Legend Series, a music theater piece encompassing elements of literature, folk tale, drama, dance, and interactive images. Feint-and-Parry Misdirect, from the Taiwanese Nursery Rhyme Series, incorporates elements of children’s literature, computer music, and interactive images in a work of image-interactive virtual musical theater; the piece is scored for voices, prepared piano with amplication effects, and percussion quartet.[1][2]
Lee's autobiography has been published in book form in a collection entitled Discovering Formosa: Taiwanese Contemporary Composers.
Lee regularly publishes scholarly research and presents lectures as well as compositions. The topics usually relate to his creative work, as when the ArtsIT 2009 Conference in Taiwan featured him in a panel discussion of "An Interactive Concert Program Based on Infrared Watermark and Audio Synthesis."[4]