Kristin Lee and Sandbox Percussion to Debut Vivian Fung's Latest Composition

Violinist Kristin Lee and GRAMMY-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion are joining forces this year to give the premiere performances of a new work composed for them by JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung. The new piece, titled Goddess//Insect, is co-commissioned by a national consortium of presenters – Emerald City Music, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, Constellations Chamber Concerts, and Newport Classical.

The world premiere performances will be presented by Emerald City Music (March 6 in Seattle, WA and March 7, 2026 in Olympia, WA), with regional and local premieres presented by Constellations Chamber Concerts in Rockville, MD (April 13, 2026) and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, NY (April 30, 2026). Additional local and regional premiere performances will be presented by Concert Nova in Cincinnati, OH; Music@Menlo in Atherton, CA; and Newport Classical in Newport, RI during summer 2026 and the 2026-2027 concert season. For these performances, Sandbox and Lee pair Fung's new work with To Sing Or Dance by Joan Tower, which was also co-commissioned by Emerald City Music, as well as Gabriella Smith's new work for Sandbox Percussion, FIVE.

Kristin Lee and Vivian Fung have a fruitful history of musical collaboration. In 2009, Lee joined Fung on a tour of Bali with the gamelan that Fung was performing with. This trip informed the violin concerto that Fung would write for Lee the following year. Of that work, Fung writes in her note on the piece, “The concerto draws on the sights, sounds, and memories of Bali that have remained in my heart from the tour, as well as my getting to know Kristin, her firebrand style of playing, and, complementing that, the intense lyricism that she expresses as well.”

“Goddess//Insect is derived from the term ‘God-Bug Syndrome' where a ‘god complex' (inflated self-importance) acts as a defense against deep-seated feelings of worthlessness,” Vivian Fung says. “I believe our world right now is facing these conflicting emotions, and so this work is ultimately a work that reflects our turbulent and chaotic times. This piece explores many of the sounds that the term embodies — little critter sounds against soaring lines in the violin, an improv section that is more dance-like and free, chromatic lines and rustling textures to embody the scurrying creatures. I see Goddess//Insect as a violin concerto of sorts, but in a more adventurous vein, as a percussion orchestra forms the backdrop for this setting. There is an inherent theatricality in the sound world I am seeking to explore, and so, as part of the process of composition, I worked with the performers to maximize the use of spatial possibilities in the room, placement of instruments, and movement of performers.”

Kristin Lee says, “This project has been in the works for several years, and I couldn't be more excited that it has finally come to life. My admiration for Sandbox Percussion's vast sound world and Vivian Fung's boundless creativity grew out of two very different musical chapters in my life, and bringing them together feels like a dream come true.”

“Beyond my own personal excitement, this piece is a celebration of an instrumentation with enormous potential; the combination of percussion quartet and violin,” Lee adds. “Yet, this pairing remains underrepresented in the repertoire. By sharing works by Vivian and Joan, I hope this project will inspire others to expand the possibilities for this instrumentation and help bring its powerful impact to a wider audience.”

Victor Caccese says, “We're thrilled to collaborate with Kristin Lee on a new work by Vivian Fung and to explore the dialogue between an instrument with a rich history like the violin and the expansive, ever-evolving sound world of a percussion quartet. Sandbox Percussion has long admired Kristin's artistry and the singular path she has forged as a violinist, and this collaboration feels like a perfect fit. This project offers a meaningful opportunity to expand the chamber music repertoire for violin and percussion quartet. Vivian's music is endlessly creative, drawing on long-standing musical traditions while blending them with fresh, contemporary ideas. Her work opens up a rich and expressive space for these instruments together, and we're excited to bring a new voice into this still largely underexplored corner of the chamber music landscape.”

Concert Details:

Emerald City Music – World Premiere
Friday, March 6, 2026 at 8pm
415 Westlake in Seattle, WA
Tickets: https://bit.ly/EmeraldLeeSandboxSeattleMarch26

Emerald City Music – Olympia Premiere
Saturday, March 7, 2026 at 7:30pm
Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts
2011 Mottman Rd SW in Olympia, WA
Tickets: https://bit.ly/EmeraldLeeSandboxOlympiaMarch26

Constellations Chamber Concerts – East Coast Premiere
Monday, April 13, 2026 at 7:30pm
Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center
51 Mannakee St. in Rockville, MD
Tickets: https://bit.ly/LeeSandboxFungConstellationsApril1326

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center – New York Premiere
Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 7:30pm
Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse
Rose Building, 165 West 65th Street, New York, NY
Tickets: https://bit.ly/LeeSandboxFungCMSLCApril2026

About Vivian Fung

JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today's most eclectic composers,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.”

Fung continues to elevate her reputation for artistic ingenuity, with recent collaborations expanding how we experience her music. Her powerful song cycle Lamenting Earth premiered in 2024 with Nicholas Phan, Jasper String Quartet, and Myra Huang. Centering around poet Claire Wahmanholm's prize-winning poem “O,” the 20-minute cycle reflects the fragile state of the earth's environment. This work has been recorded by the performers to be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2026. Ominous, commissioned and premiered by Grossman Ensemble and conductor Jeffrey Meyer in 2024, portrays the composer's experience with her mother's recent diagnosis of dementia through punctuations, pitch bends, and murmurings across the 13-member work.

Fung's 2025-2026 premieres began in October 2025 with a new work for string quartet and poet, as part of Del Sol Quartet's project Facing the Moon: Songs of Diaspora, featuring the poetry of San Francisco-based Jenny Lim. In addition to the new work for Kristin Lee and Sandbox Percussion, Fung will write a new piece for Ensemble for These Times to include homemade percussion for Haruka Fujii. Continued partnerships include Fung's first opera, My Family//Cambodia, 1975 with librettist Royce Vavrek; Girl from the 905, a new song cycle with Vavrek and soprano Andrea Núñez; and a new work for violin and electronics to be premiered in early 2027, based on a recent fieldwork trip to Guizhou, China with violinist Nancy Zhou.

A recipient of numerous grants and awards, Fung received a 2025 JUNO Nomination for “Classical Composition of the Year” for String Quartet No. 4; the 2013 JUNO Award for “Classical Composition of the Year” for Violin Concerto No. 1; a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; and grants from NewMusicUSA, ASCAP, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Fung's music can be heard on a number of professional albums, most recently Glimpses on Australian pianist Andrea Lam's album Piano Diary; and Insects & Machines: Quartets of Vivian Fung, a portrait album featuring Fung's first four string quartets performed by the Jasper String Quartet. The last album won the 2025 Chamber Music America award for Album of the Year. Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. She currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian, and their dog Coco.

About Kristin Lee

Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”

As a soloist, Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hawai'i Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world's finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea's Kumho Art Gallery. In March 2026, she makes her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall performing her program American Sketches with pianist John Novacek.

An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing regularly in New York at Lincoln Center and on tour. In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is a devoted educator. She has served on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and she has also been in residence with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and is a summer faculty member at Music@Menlo's Chamber Music Institute. Lee is also the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music (ECM), a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State.

In fall 2024, Kristin Lee released her debut solo album, American Sketches, on First Hand Records. The album has a personal resonance for Lee. A native of Seoul, Korea, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. During her childhood, playing the violin was a refuge from bullying and racism for Kristin – she moved to the U.S. not speaking any English, and felt the violin became her voice. As a foreign-born citizen of the U.S., Lee was compelled to select this repertoire to express her heartfelt sentiments for the country she now calls her own. The album includes works by H.T. Burleigh, Kevin Puts, Amy Beach, Thelonious Monk, Scott Joplin, and George Gershwin. American Sketches encapsulates both Kristin Lee's journey as an American, as well as the journeys of these composers in the United States. San Francisco Classical Voice writes, "[Beach's Romance] elicits Lee's richest and most gorgeous tones, its high ending executed so beautifully as to make Fritz Kreisler proud." Textura listed American Sketches as #6 on their Top 20 Classical Albums of 2024.

Kristin Lee's honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival's Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists' Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master's degree from The Juilliard School. Lee's violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley.