Riley Lee has performed worldwide in such venues as the Sydney Opera House, Boston Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center (Wash DC), Espace Cardin (Paris), the Roundhouse Theatre (London), and smaller venues too numerous to count.
He began playing the shakuhachi in Japan in 1971. In 1980, he became the first non-Japanese to attain dai shihan (Grand Master) ranking in shakuhachi. Riley’s studies with traditional teachers in Japan have included such peculiar methods as practicing barefoot in the snow, blowing into his flute under waterfalls and in blizzards until icicles form at its end, and running the Boston Marathon and then playing taiko drums at the finish line.
Riley has a PhD in Ethnomusicology and a regular lecturer at universities. A frequent visitor to Princeton University, he recently created and taught a semester-long course at Princeton University, called “Mindfulness, Meditation, Memory and Music”. He gives breathing workshops worldwide, most notably the three-day intensive course he leads each year at the internationally-known meditation centre in Germany, Benediktushof.
Riley’s music has enjoyed nearly 50 million streams on Spotify. His latest album is Breath of the Earth, an acclaimed 3-CD set devoted to the music of Hildegard von Bingen.