about

Helen Yee is a violinist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer whose regular stomping grounds include the worlds of music between traditional and new, “high” and “low,” East and West. Over the years in New York City she expanded beyond the confines of her initial classical training to improvise and compose in multiple styles. Now residing in Kalamazoo, Michigan her explorations continue with solo works incorporating violin with live looping and electronics. And in 2024, she released her debut solo album, entitled Orchestrope.

THEATRE AND DANCE

Much of her recent collaborative work in New York has been live-looping based music for theatre and dance projects. In 2020, she composed and performed music for the New York premier of Lovesong (Imperfect), written and directed by José Rivera. Her work for the plays Miss Julia and Pillowtalk has toured through festivals in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Europe, and South America. Collaborations with dance companies including Mark Lamb Dance, Kinesis Dance Project, and Chris Ferris largely featured her improvisations with and without electronics. During the pandemic she also scored music for epic hybrid stream-play NERO, as well as artistic dance film projects.

FREELANCE, BANDS, AND OTHER WILD COLLABORATIONS

While my early training began with Western classical and traditional Chinese music, While Yee’s early training began with Western classical and traditional Chinese music, after her studies at Yale she returned to New York. There, she was part of the lively independent music scene and recorded and performed with a range of avant-garde jazz, rock, singer-songwriter and alternative hip-hop bands.  Venues included The Stone, Roulette, Issue Project Room, BAM Café. As a hired session musician she also recorded for a handful of movie soundtracks and performed with ensembles in venues from Carnegie Hall to independent spaces in Brooklyn. For many years she was also a member of Music From China, an ensemble that offers traditional and new music on traditional Chinese instruments, where she performed on yangqin (Chinese hammer dulcimer).

ALT-CHAMBER AND STRING MUSIC ROOTS

Enduring before the members scattered to three different states, Yee was violinist for Trio Tritticali, which in 2011 released its debut recording “Issue #1,” reviewed by Lucid Culture as “one of the most gripping, intelligent, richly eclectic albums of recent years.” Prior to that, from 1999 to 2009 she was an original member of Invert, a NYC-based string quartet performing original music by its members and unique arrangements of works by other composers. Invert turned the format of the traditional string quartet on its head – featuring two cellists instead of the usual two violins. Their original repertoire ranged from pieces evocative of soundtracks from expressionist cinema to driving melodic works that often feature open sections of improvisation. The group released three recordings during their time together and toured nationally as the opening band for Rachel’s.

These days you can also find Yee performing her solo live-looping set, and also playing with the Kalamazoo-based jazz manouche group, The Birdseed Salesmen.