Yoon-Ji Lee

Yoon-Ji Lee is a South Korean composer based in the United States. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, She currently works as an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music.

Biography Yoon-Ji Lee studied organ, pansori, piano, voice, and violin during her youth. She attended Ewha Womans University, where she obtained her bachelor's degree and New England Conservatory of Music, where she obtained her Master of Music degree in 2006 and her graduate diploma in 2007. She moved to New York University and became a teacher there in 2009, remaining there until 2017. In 2018, she collaborated with artists Bang Geul Han and Steven Mygind Pedersen for Sunday Supper, a chamber opera at National Sawdust inspired by the 2007 novel The Vegetarian. In 2019, she performed Angels Broken, a composition with three main sections performed on string and taepyeongso which she said "documents in musical form the history of comfort women", at the From East Asia – Unforgotten Song concert at Brandeis University. Her composition Shakonn, the opening song in Pauline Kim Harris' 2021 album Wild At Heart, was praised by TheWholeNote as "a volcano of sound and energy built over a held bass note, pulling Chaconne apart and transforming it", while Gramophone praised "the juxtaposition of haunting phrases and daunting acrobatics in [her piece] with fearless vibrancy" and Strings Magazine praised "the result [as] exhilarating". In 2024, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition.

As of 2024, she was a resident of Boston.