Born in Singapore, pianist Frances Lee has keen interests in collaborative performance, musicology, and music theory, and particularly enjoys creative programming that offers perspectives on lesser-known music. She has given lecture-recitals on the music of Fanny Hensel, and created an outreach project titled She Wrote Music Too, with the aim of increasing awareness of women composers throughout history. In addition to solo performances, she collaborates frequently in duos as well as in larger chamber groups, and has had years of experience as an orchestral player. She holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance from The Shepherd School of Music, Rice University (Texas, USA), where she previously attained her MMus in Piano Performance. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Unconventional: Sonata-Form Manipulations in the Multi-Movement Works of Fanny Hensel”, adopted a theory-focused approach to six of Hensel’s works. Frances also holds a BMus in Piano and a BA in German Studies from the Bard College Conservatory of Music (New York, USA). Her Senior Project, titled “Italy, Writing and Music: A Translation with a Critical Introduction of Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s Italienisches Tagebuch (Italian Diary)”, involved German-to-English translation of Hensel’s letters and diary entries. Her primary teachers have been Brian Connelly, Peter Serkin, Melvin Chen, and Rustem Hayroudinoff. She has also worked with Jeffrey Kahane, Matti Raekallio, and Lala Isakova.

Frances has performed widely in Singapore and overseas, having given solo and chamber performances in countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Thailand, the United Kingdom (including at the Southbank Centre in London), and the United States. She made her concerto debut with the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein, and has collaborated with artists such as violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Brian Connelly. She was a guest artist multiple times on the Context concert series in Houston, including a performance that was later broadcast on Houston Public Media. In addition to giving Texas premieres of multiple contemporary works, Frances has performed with multiple professional ensembles, such as the Da Camera Young Artists, Hoppa Project, the Houston Chamber Choir, the string ensemble Kinetic, the new music ensemble Loop38, and the Victoria Symphony (Texas, USA). She was a member of the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra on their concert tour to Carnegie Hall, New York, and a member of the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra on their tour of Europe, performing in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Vienna.