Through a public-school program, Nina Lee (BM ’97, MM ’99, cello), began learning cello in Chesterfield, Missouri, at age 10. Six years later, she left home to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She went on to complete her bachelor’s and master’s at Juilliard with Joel Krosnick, attend the Tanglewood Music Festival, and tour with the Marlboro Music Festival, where she collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida, András Schiff, Felix Galimir, and Samuel Rhodes. 

In 1999, Lee joined the Brentano Quartet with which she has performed throughout North America, Europe Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan. In addition, she has not only recorded the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven but also championed new music represented in her quartet’s commissioned works of Stephen Hartke, Steve Mackey, Vijay Iyer, James MacMillan, Bruce Adolphe, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Shulamit Ran (to name a few). Lee has recorded for the Azica, Naxos, Mode, Cantaloupe, Albany, and Tzadik labels. 

Among the projects the Brentano Quartet has undertaken, it recorded the soundtrack to the 2012 film A Late Quartet, which centered around Beethoven’s Op. 131. The film, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, and Catherine Keener, also featured Lee playing herself in a cameo.  

As important to her life as a musician, Lee has made a commitment to teaching chamber music. She has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia Universities and coaches chamber music at the Yale School of Music, where the Brentano Quartet has been in residence since 2014. Regular summer performing and teaching appearances include the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Taos School of Music. Lee has also participated as a guest faculty member at the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar, the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music and Kneisel Hall, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland, Maine. She has also made numerous appearances at the Spoleto Festival USA and La Jolla SummerFest. Lee has also served on the jury of the Salzburg International Quartet Competition in 2023 and the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition Jury in 2025.