Eddie Lee

Eddie Lee is a pianist and composer from London, he teaches keys on our CertHE Popular Music Performance and BA Creative Musicianship programmes.

Eddie Lee is a London-based pianist and composer who specialises in jazz, pop and improvised music. He is a graduate of the prestigious BMus Jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music, where he received the tutorship of top international pianists such as Gwilym Simcock and Kit Downes. Eddie’s work as a performer and composer draws from a range of influences that goes wide and deep. From the experimental indie-rock of Radiohead, to the ambient piano explorations of Nils Frahm, to the pioneering sampling work of J-Dilla, and all the way back to Eddie’s roots in the jazz tradition - from Oscar Peterson to Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau and beyond. This immense blend informs Eddie’s versatility and ever-evolving creative vision.

Eddie has toured extensively across the UK, Europe and Asia, collaborating and writing with artists across London’s electrifying jazz scene. Since 2021 Eddie has been performing with virtuoso guitarist and producer, Mansur Brown. In the UK alone this has included headlining the Barbican X Boiler Room show at the legendary Barbican Hall, performing on the main stage at Gala Festival in 2022 and at NTS Day Festival in 2023, as well as a headline show at a sold-out EartH Hackney. In 2023 touring has taken Eddie across Europe and Asia, including performances at Frankhan Istanbul, New Morning Paris and Hosoi Festival in Stockholm, as well as headline performances in Indonesia and in Japan at Billboard Tokyo and Osaka.

Eddie is performs with and writes for Queenstown Collective - a band born from the creative hotpot of the Brixton-based Queenstown Sessions, who now are burning as a serious emerging force on the UK Jazz scene. Other regular collaborators include the sensational Poppy Daniels, London-based avant-garde jazz powerhouse Alistair Martin, and Slovak flautist and composer Maria Rehakova, whose project, Topol’ana, has seen Eddie record and tour extensively in Slovakia, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. Eddie’s eclectic style and skill-set mean that he is in demand with collaborators from all corners of the music scene; poets, producers, pop singers, instrumentalists and more.

In 2020, Eddie was the recipient of the prestigious Dankworth Prize for Big Band Composition. His prize-winning submission, Dean, is an epic interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s trailblazing novel, On The Road. Today, Eddie’s compositional palette is brooding, melancholic and always cinematic. Writing and recording compositions for both solo piano, as well as an upcoming project as a leader, Eddie’s next EP, To Be Heard, promises to be a deeply personal exploration of these moods.

All of this translates into Eddie’s work as a teacher and workshop leader. He is passionate about passing on his skills, knowledge and experience to the next generation of performers and artists. At ICMP, he teaches keyboard classes on our Creative Musicianship programmes. In 2023, Eddie stepped into the role of Module Leader for the CertHE Theory, Technique and Technology module.

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