036 – Johnny Lee wasn’t meant to be a Harvard MD

Stand Partners for Life

Violinist Johnny Lee is Akiko's mirror image on stage at Disney Hall: he sits fourth chair second violin, while she's fourth chair first violin. But they have something else in common too. Both went to Harvard, where there is no music performance major. Akiko thought she'd be a lawyer, Johnny a doctor (or was he just pretending?), but they both found their way back to the violin by the time they graduated. The Stand Partners have logged thousands of hours of "unofficial" conversation with Johnny, so we're excited to present him on the podcast. Here's Johnny's path to the LA Phil and beyond! Transcript [00:00:00] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole. [00:00:04] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto. [00:00:18] NC: And we are thrilled to be here with our great friend on we’ve been trying to get on this podcast actually ever since we started this show. Good friend Johnny Lee, violinist with us in the LA Phil. Frequent hanger outer here at the Cole-Tarumoto residence. You’ve got a heavy dose of the kids tonight. You got to experience dinner, TV watching time, bedtime. [00:00:43] AT: You missed violin practice time though. Lucky you. [00:00:47] JL: I have my wine. So it’s fine. [00:00:49] AT: That’s actually how we got you here. We bribed you with food and drink. [00:00:51] NC: That’s true. Johnny showed up wearing his Stand Partners for Life t-shirt, which made all of us happy, especially Hannah noticed it right away. If you too would like a snazzy Stand Partners for Life t-shift, go to standpartnersforlife.com/shirts. That’s shirt, plural, and guys and gals designs. But thank you so much for being here, Johnny. [00:01:12] AT: Yay! [00:01:13] NC: Yay! There are a few reasons to get you here. One, we talk about the orchestra all the time, and LA Phil life all the time. But in addition to that, you and Akiko have some real similarities, I guess besides the fact that Akiko is 4th chair first violin. Johnny, 4th chair second violin. [00:01:34] AT: He’s my mirror. [00:01:34] NC: That’s right. We do since first and second, mostly sit across the stage from each other. Here in L.A. Not Akiko’s favorite setup at the moment. [00:01:44] AT: I think everybody is tired hearing my opinion on where the violin should sit. [00:01:49] NC: But you do get to mirror each other across the stage quite often. The bigger similarity is that you both went to the same school for undergrad and you actually overlapped. [00:01:58] AT: We went to school in Boston. [00:02:00] JL: Cambridge. [00:02:02] NC: They went to Harvard. I get to hear about it a lot. No! You guys are good about it. Actually, tonight I really do want to hear about it in quite some detail. But, yeah, neither of you went to conservatory for undergrad. So that’s something that I know a lot of. You guys out there have asked about just the difference between going to conservatory, not going to conservatory, at least for undergrad. Yeah, the different paths that people take to get to the LA Phil. Johnny, if you would back us up from Harvard, from Cambridge, and tell us a little bit about where you’re from, how you got started on the instrument and all that, and then we’ll get to get to school days. [00:02:41] JL: Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. So I was at the Cleveland Institute of Music for prepschool – Not prepschool. Preparatory program, age 7 I would say. So I started when I was 5, but started at CIM at 7. But that was of course because my parents were Korean immigrants and they just wanted us to play violin. Us being me and my two older brothers just to put on our college application. [00:03:10] AT: So were you all at – [00:03:11] JL: Yeah. So would have lessons on Friday after school. My mom would drive us all there. She’d take notes during lessons. Then on the way home we’d get KFC as a reward. [00:03:24] NC: I thought you were going to say on the way home you’d get yel...