Kelvin Lee is a Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leuven and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He received his BA (Hons) in music and MPhil in musicology from the University of Hong Kong, an MA in conducting with distinction from the University of York, and a PhD in musicology from Durham University. He also obtained a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Durham University and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Kelvin previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Leuven.
Kelvin’s research revolves around the analysis and history of art music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular focuses on i) musical form, ii) the intersection between music and philosophy and iii) musical interculturality. These interests have also taken his work across a number of related areas including chromatic harmony, tonal transculturation, global musical modernisms, music historiography, and analysis and performance. Kelvin has published widely on the relationship between musical form and the broader contextual concerns, especially in symphonic works at the fin de siècle. His writings have appeared (or is forthcoming) in peer-reviewed journals such as Music Analysis, Journal of Music Theory, Musurgia and Revue belge de Musicologie, as well as in edited volumes including Between Centres and Peripheries: Music in Europe from the French Revolution to WWI (Brepols) and Nikolai Medtner: Music, Aesthetics, and Contexts (Olms). Kelvin is recipient of the Musurgia 25th Anniversary Article Prize from the Société Française d’Analyse Musicale. He is Chair of the Society for Music Analysis Formal Theory Study Group.
Kelvin is now completing a monograph, provisionally titled The Sonata Moment: Dialectical Form and Symphonic Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, which develops a dialectical theory of symphonic sonata form and explores the dawn of Austro-German musical modernism via the aesthetics of the moment. He is also working on a FWO-funded project titled ‘Rethinking Peripheral Symphonism: Transcultural Form and Glocal Modernism at the Fin de Siècle’. The project looks into the global engagement with the Austro-German musical culture and considers how the ensuing cultural dialogue paved the way for the rise of musical modernisms across East Asia, Europe and North America (especially in Finland, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States). With a focus on the symphony, it also seeks to examine how such a discourse is manifested in the genre via comparative music analysis, and from there, to construct an intercultural theory of musical form that could potentially apply to works emanated from similar contexts.
As a conductor, Kelvin has worked with North Czech Philharmonic (Czech Republic), Argovia Philharmonic (Switzerland), St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra (Russia), Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok (Hungary), Savaria Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), Orchestra Magna Grecia (Italy), Bucharest Symphony Orchestra (Romania), Pazardzhik Symphony Orchestra (Bulgaria), Glasperlenspiel Sinfonietta (Estonia), Lemberg Sinfonietta (Ukraine), Chamber Ensemble of Cadaqués Orchestra (Spain) and Chimera Ensemble (UK), among others. He has performed in venues such as Musikverein Vienna, Municipal House Prague, Pesti Vigadó Budapest and Lviv Philharmonie. Kelvin was the first Music Director of Shun Hing College Schola Cantorum (Hong Kong), with which he won the Third Prize in the fifth International World Peace Choral Festival (Austria) and performed at the United Nations Office in support of the first World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. He was also appointed as a visiting conductor at the Northwest School of Music (China), where he held workshops for its symphony and wind orchestras.
Committed to promoting a wider understanding of symphonic music and its culture, Kelvin has spoken at public events and written essays for leading orchestras including Philharmonia Orchestra and the BBC Orchestras, among others.