Acclaimed Boston-born drummer and composer Lee Fish has been part of the thriving East Coast music scene since 2018. A fixture at Wally’s Cafe during his student tenure at Berklee — playing with such distinctive leaders as Jason Palmer, Esperanza Spalding, Nadia Washington, and Evgeny Lebedev — Lee became a highly sought collaborator in Boston, and is now freelancing as well as leading his own band in NYC in venues such as The Jazz Gallery, Birdland and Sunny’s.

Having earned his master’s degree on full scholarship at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Lee received his earliest musical education on the road. At age 3, long before he studied under Danilo Pérez, Terri Lyne Carrington and Joe Lovano, he would perform with his parents’ band Amante at venues across North America, from Florida to Quebec. Since then, he’s performed all over the world on nearly every continent, appearing on more than 50 recordings, including Mike Tucker’s 2014 release Live! Featuring Warren Wolf, and Jason Palmer’s critically acclaimed 2019 release Sweet Love that received four stars from DownBeat Magazine.

In the studio and on the bandstand, Lee has enjoyed artistic associations with a range of icons, including Danilo Perez, Warren Wolf, Gary Burton, Julian Lage, John Ellis, David Gilmore and Ryan Scott, among others. Lee’s artistry allows energy to inform his choices on the bandstand. His aesthetic reflects joyful confrontation. He seeks to challenge traditional constructs, mingle genres and push the music in soulful new directions, always inviting the listener along for the ride. According to DownBeat critic Matthew Kessel, Lee’s “funky rhythms bring to mind a New Orleans snare player.”