Your path: Gordon Lee
Gordon Lee
Jazz Piano
B.M., Indiana University; M.M., Portland State University
Professional Activities
Composer, jazz pianist, arranger, conductor and music educator.
He has had commissions to compose chamber music and music for large ensembles from Oregon Symphony members, big band leaders and vocalists including collaboration with Ghanaian singer Obo Addy on an orchestral suite in 2004.
He has taught jazz studies at Western Oregon University since 1999.
Executive Director of the award-winning WOU/Mel Brown Summer Jazz Camp.
Previously on the faculty at Mount Hood Community College.
Lee has performed with such jazz and pop stars as Don Cherry, Bill Frisell, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Temptations. More recently Lee has worked with Bobby Hutcherson, Dewey Redman, Houston Person, Frank Foster and Javon Jackson.
Lee began playing with drummer Mel Brown in 1986, a musical relationship that continues still.
He has performed all over the world: several times at the Mt. Hood Festival of Jazz; the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles; the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; Les Ducs des Lombards in Paris; across Austria and southern Germany; Tokyo; Lima, Peru; Istanbul, Turkey; and Beijing, China.
He has performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of David Amram and the Oregon Symphony under Norman Leyden and Bill Conti.
Awards
In 1989, the Mel Brown Sextet, playing Lee’s compositions and arrangements, won the international Hennessy Jazz Search, beating over 700 bands from around the world.
Lee’s CD Gordon Bleu won Best Jazz Recording of 1990 from the Northwest Music Association.
Recordings
Gordon Bleu, 1990.
Land Whales in New York featuring Jim Pepper, 1991.
On the Shoulders of Giants with Leroy Vinnegar, 1993.
Rough Jazz with John Gross, 1997.
Flying Dream, on the Origin Arts label, features an all star big band from the Pacific Northwest.
One-Two-Three features solo, duo and trio pieces with Renato Caranto, Andre St. James and Carlton Jackson.