Hong Kong-born cellist brings cultural diversity to classical music festival
Trey Lee Chui-yee launches fourth edition of Musicus Festival, with an array of local, international artists, and which comes with a Finnish twist this year
“Culturally undefinable” were the words that a friend of Trey Lee Chui-yee recently used to describe the internationally renowned Hong Kong-born cellist, who founded the city’s annual classical Musicus Festival now entering its fourth year.
Lee, who moved to the United States at the age of eight, and toured all around the world as an adult, says that he increasingly feels as though his cultural identity was becoming blurred.
“I would say my lifestyle is European, my sense of humour is American but my cultural reactions are Asian,” he says. “If I am introduced to elders I don’t know in Hong Kong, for example, I still know how to address them.”
Lee is a former pupil of New York’s Juilliard School, a prestigious performing arts conservatory which counts singer Alicia Keys and late actor Robin Williams among its famous alumni. He attended music lessons on Saturdays, which he says were “a welcome break” from the intensive academic courses he took during the week at Stuyvesant High School, a specialist fee-paying science and maths institution.
“It was a very enriching experience,” he says. “I had the time of my life”.
Lee speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese because his mother, an accomplished pianist, thought the former would be useful for her children as they travelled for their careers.
