Mendel Lee - Composer, Musician, Educator, Creator

Who was your biggest musical influence growing up?

when i was a freshman in high school, before i knew anything about contemporary art music, my friend had me listen to "Electric Counterpoint" by Steve Reich. He continues to be one of my strongest influences today.

Are you in a band? Have you been in bands?

I help teach the Tulane University Marching Band. I am the director of nienteForte, a contemporary art music concert series based out of Tulane. I was in a fusion electronica group called Martian Luther.

What's the biggest audience you ever performed to? What's the smallest?

The Tulane University Marching Band marched in the Saints Victory Parade in 2010 to a crowd of about 800,000 people stretched across a one mile parade route. It felt absolutely historic.

Mendel Lee hasn't uploaded any pics yet.

Habits of Man (2002) is a solo audio work I did for the Future Music Oregon concert series at the University of Oregon. The source material come from a house party near my place of residence that got out of control that turned into a massive shouting fest, bottle throwing, and fight between various attendees of the party and a couple of exchanges with passersby. The material was then heavily manipulated in Kyma and ProTools to create a work meant to capture and amplify the uninhibited negative energy of the confrontations. All of the audio in the piece is manipulation of the human voice with the exception of the "crinkly" sound which is manipulation of a person clapping. Played through an iTunes visualizer just for kicks.