Meet the Musicians: Wayne Lee

Name: Wayne
Nickname: "The Stomach"
Instrument: Violin
Friday night libation: Seltzer and a Balvenie 12

Favorite piece that's being performed at PCMF 2016 and why:
I love every piece that we've programmed, but I reserve a special place in my heart for Anthony Cheung's sonata, which was written for me at the end of high school and beginning of college. Looking back, we were incredibly young then — but you wouldn't know it from the beauty and sophistication of the piece.

What are you looking forward most about spending a week in the Bay Area?
Reconnecting with the countless friends and mentors in the Bay Area who have known me and supported me since I was in diapers.

What's the craziest or most memorable thing that's happened to you during a performance?
A few years ago, I was playing piano trios for a fundraising event at a large public library auditorium in Flushing, Queens. It turned out to be an audience clearly unaccustomed to attending chamber music performances. At one point — I think I was in the middle of the slow movement of Mendelssohn's C minor Trio — a ringer went off, and a woman in one of the front rows (she may have also been eating her way through a bucket of fried chicken) shouted into her phone, "Hello? Hello?? I can't hear you, there's a bunch of people playing music in here!"