Korean-American cellist Sydney Lee has established herself as an artist of refined elegance and profound sincerity. She garnered recognition when she claimed both 1st prize at the 2022 Washington International Competition and 2nd prize at the 2022 Classic Strings International Competition. Most recently, she was awarded the inaugural $50,000 Gurrena Fellowship from Meadowmount School of Music. Additional accolades include 1st prize at the International Antonio Janigro Cello Competition in Croatia, where she subsequently debuted with the Zagreb Soloists. Since her solo debut at age 13 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Sydney has continued to perform extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in many of the world’s leading venues. Renowned cellist Julian Lloyd Webber praised her performance with the Armenian Symphony State Orchestra, “Sydney Lee’s playing of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante was mesmerizing.
She surmounted all of its technical challenges with ease and gave us a joyous musical experience. It was a performance to treasure.” As founder of the Galvin Cello Quartet, they have been building an international profile following their silver-medal win at the 2021 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and selection as winners of the 2022 Victor Elmaleh Competition. They are currently represented by the Concert Artists Guild. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University, Sydney continues her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Northwestern with Hans Jorgen Jensen.
She will begin this fall as Cello Professor of the McDuffie Center for Strings in Macon, Georgia. In her spare time, Sydney served as a Content Assistant for The Violin Channel. Sydney finds joy in the art of crafting captivating lifestyle content through her vlogs, where she unveils the tapestry of her journeys, offering glimpses into her life as a musician, surviving the Chicago winters, and even her exhilarating escapade of maneuvering a dune buggy through the vast expanse of the Dubai desert.
