Cynthia Cozette Lee

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About

Dr. Cynthia Cozette Lee is a highly talented award winning contemporary composer, flautist and poet. She has written for opera, orchestra, solo voice art songs, hymns, instrumental, choral, wind and strings chamber ensembles. Her music has been performed in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico at events with such distinguished organizations as the College Music Society, Flute Society of Greater Philadelphia, National Association of Negro Musicians, Women of Color Festival and the Mu Phi Epsilon International Conventions. Her talents as an arranger include arranging and transcribing piano music by Mozart and J.S. Bach for flute trio and flute quartet.

Dr. Lee is formally trained as a composer being the first African American and woman to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition. Her Doctorate degree is in Educational Leadership from Rowan University and her Master’s is in Public Administration from Rutgers University. Dr. Lee holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Music Composition from Carnegie Mellon University. She has studied composition with highly eminent composers George Rochberg, George Crumb, Roland Leich, Leonardo Balada, William Hoskins and Joseph Wilcox Jenkins.  Dr. Lee studied The Art of Music Copying at the Juilliard School of Music with Arnold Arnstein, the personal copyist to Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti and many other distinguished American composers. Her award-winning compositions Colors for Women’s Voices and Percussion Ensemble and The Martyr for Baritone and Orchestra have received awards in the Mu Phi Epsilon National Composition Contests. Her composition Nigerian Treasures in 3 Movements for solo unaccompanied flute received an award and first public international performance from the College Music Society in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dr. Lee’s orchestral compositions are Ebony Reflections for Chamber Orchestra, Nepenthe Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and A.M.E.R.I.C.A. Dr. Lee has written for vocal, instrumental, chamber music, orchestra and composed several operas, Adea, The Black Guitar, Partway to Freedom and Let Courage Be The Light. She is registered in the International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory and also has been included in the Who's Who in American Music: Classical.

Dr. Lee has received many other distinguished awards and honors including a Philadelphia Picasso Grant, Mu Phi Epsilon Grant, Rowan University Schrock Grant, Rutgers University Graduate Assistantship, Victor Saudek Flute Scholarship and Honorable Mention in the Pittsburgh Flute Club Composition Contest. Dr. Lee plans to selfproduced her album featuring her original flute songs titled Africa Enchants Me Flute Song Celebrations in 2020.  Dr. Lee has spent most of her career bringing her original music and poems based on Black American historical themes to local and international communities. She has produced and directed many concerts highlighting her award winning works. As a poet she has had her poems published by the Moonstone Arts Center in their 21st and 22nd Anthology Editions of the Poetry Ink Collection and her book of poetry titled The Forgotten Schoolhouse will be published by Covenant Publishers in 2020. She soon hopes to have her unique music compositions published in 2020 by a professional music publisher.

Related Information

https://www.cynthiacozettelee.com/

Works by Cynthia Cozette Lee