Horn player Lee Cyphers is an emerging orchestral musician currently serving as a Horn Fellow with The Orchestra Now. In 2025 he won the audition for Assistant Horn with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. Cyphers previously served as Second Horn with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra and has performed with a range of educational and professional ensembles, including the Aspen Festival Orchestra, Denver Municipal Band, and Juilliard’s AXIOM Ensemble.

Cyphers believes strongly in making classical music more accessible through education, and by bringing classical music out of the concert hall. He holds a Master of Music degree and a Performance Certificate from the University of Denver. There, he served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in musicology at the Lamont School of Music, and Assistant of Educational Programming at the Newman Center. He earned his Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School, where he was a Gluck Community Service Fellow, collaborating with other musicians, actors, and dancers to put on interdisciplinary, interactive performances for community members who might not otherwise encounter live performance. He has also taught private horn students, led brass sectionals for young students, and served as Mentor for the Juilliard Pre-College Symphony.

A strong advocate for new music, Cyphers is passionate about working with composers to premiere their works. He was a founding member of the Lawrence Graduate Bayreuth Tuben Quintet, a Wagner tuba ensemble that works toward its mission of “Queering Wagner,” in part by programming the works of queer, living, and otherwise marginalized composers. In 2023, Cyphers performed with the quintet at NUNC!, a contemporary music festival at Northwestern University. He appears on recordings for the ensemble’s debut and second albums.

He has participated in several prestigious summer festivals including the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Lake George Music Festival, the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute, the Valdres Sommersymfoni in Norway, and the Maine Chamber Music Seminar.