Damon Thomas Lee

Damon Thomas Lee (b. 1975 in Lansing, Michigan), composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and audiovisual, multimedia works, studied at the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University. He completed his dissertation in 2006 on the Film Music of Toru Takemitsu, with research in Tokyo supported by the Asian Cultural Council. Damon received a Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, enabling him to work with composers Sandeep Bhagwati and Wolfgang Rihm.

During the next ten years, he composed and taught at various institutions in Europe serving as: artist-in-residence at the KlangRaumKrems Minoritenkirche in Krems an der Donau; guest artist at ZKM (The Center for Art and Media Technology) | Institute for Music & Acoustics, Karlsruhe; lecturer in the department of Music Informatics at the University of Music Karlsruhe, the first of its kind and recipient of one of Deutsche Bank's '365 Orte im Land der Ideen' prizes; lecturer in the 'international and world-leading' ranked department of Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield, England.

His concert, audiovisual, and collaborative works have been performed and screened by leading groups and institutions worldwide, and his sound design works made in collaboration with Lida Abdul have been exhibited extensively: biennials of São Paulo, Moscow, Sharjah, Göteborg; installations at au Musée National Pablo Picasso La Guerre et la Paix, Centre d‘art contemporain de Brétigny, Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice, Art Basel, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Ausstellungshalle zeitgenoessische Kunst Muenster, among others. Honors and prizes for his artistic and academic activities include: a “Landesgraduiertenförderungspreise,” for electroacoustic composition from the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany; two resumptions of his Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Chancellor Fellowship for renewed research visits to Germany; the Clinker Foundation Scholarship, Mexico City; two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; the Brian Israel Prize; First Prize from the Americas Vocal Ensemble's choral music competition; First Prize from the Museum in the Community for String Quartet; a German Academic Exchange Scholarship for language study in Dresden, Germany; the Sage Fellowship for Graduate studies from Cornell University. He is now artist-in-residence at Hochschule fuer Musik Karlsruhe, currently writing a piano piece for Mark Markham and an orchestral work for Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra to be premiered during its 2012-13 season.

In 2010 Damon joined the faculty of the UNL School of Music as Professor of Digital Arts and Music Composition. The Digital Arts Initiative courses at UNL are open to all students: http://www.unl.edu/digitalarts/ Courses: Composition (For Composition majors) Film-Scoring Film-Scoring and Creative Sound Design (Digital Arts Initiative) Introduction to Music Composition and Digital Audio Production (Digital Arts Initiative) Performance, Programming, & Interactivity (Max/MSP/Jitter), in collaboration with Jeff Thompson from the Department of Art & Art History (Digital Arts Initiative)