Robert Lee is an upright bassist, composer, arranger and bandleader based in Toronto. He was not born in Korea: Textura calls him a "proud Canadian-born Korean and the son of immigrant parents", and The WholeNote describes him as a Canadian-born Korean bassist. No source places him in Korea for study, residence or work, and no Hangul spelling of his name is published, so none is given here. His Korean basis is his heritage and, since 2022, the music he has built on it; his career has been a Canadian one. His birth date and birthplace are not published either; JAZZ.FM91 gave his age as 26 in July 2019. Robert Lee is a very common name, and the one on every release described below.

His own biography says his musical interest started with the violin before he switched to the bass. He is a graduate of the University of Guelph's music program and of Humber College's jazz school, and he earned a Master's in Contemporary Performance from Berklee Valencia in 2021. He names Neil Swainson, Ted Quinlan, Mike Downes, Geoff Young, Lorne Lofsky, Kieran Overs, Pat LaBarbera, Kirk MacDonald, Andrew Scott, Kevin Turcotte, Amanda Tosoff, Andrew McAnsh, Nick Mancini, Perico Sambeat, Matt Baker and Magda Giannikou among his teachers. At Humber he won the Duke Ellington Society Scholarship in 2017 and 2018 and the James Appel School Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship in 2018. In 2018 he arranged "Then and Now" for the Humber Studio Band while Pat Metheny was the college's artist in residence, and played with the Ted Quinlan Pat Metheny Tribute Ensemble at the residency showcase. He took part in the Spectrum Music New Voices Composers Residency in 2017, attended the Keep an Eye Summer Jazz Workshop at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2018, and was a guest on JAZZ.FM91's Jazzology series that year. The York Region Chamber Music Society commissioned "Castle in the Sky" from him for the Hogtown Brass Quintet, which premiered in Richmond Hill in 2019.

His first recordings were two EPs he released himself. Blink, released on October 14, 2018, holds four tracks, among them the three-part suite "Aleppo" with its movements "Civilization", "Crumble" and "Revival". Still Life, released on January 7, 2019, holds two tracks, "Elpis" and "Still Life", played by a sextet with Dennis Kwok on alto saxophone, James Bayford on soprano and tenor saxophones, Aidan Funston on guitar, Augustine Yates on piano and Jaden Spanier on drums. Patricio Llovet produced both and Humber's recording studios hosted the sessions.

Ascension, his first full-length album, followed on April 10, 2020. It holds ten originals, with lyrics by Lee for some of them, and features the saxophonist Allison Au, the guitarist Trevor Giancola, the vibraphonist Michael Davidson, the pianist Augustine Yates, the drummer Jacob Wutzke and the vocalists Mingjia Chen and Caity Gyorgy. The WholeNote's Kati Kiilaspea reviewed it in July 2020, singled out "Burton's Bounce" for its swing and "Cardinal on the Cobblestone" for the voice, guitar and bass closing the set, and relayed the album's own description of its sound as modern chamber music, jazz and contemporary folk.

Cha-Ran (August 26, 2022, TPR Records, also called Three Pines Records) is where the Korean material begins. The seven pieces were written from Korean folk stories, and Lee's stated aim was to evoke the narrative feeling of Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. It was recorded at the Berklee Valencia scoring stage, with the vocalists Carolina Alabau, Mateo Falgas and Nina Nicolaiewsky, the flamenco guitarist Kris Ramakrishna, the guitarist Marco Pisani, the vibraphonist Brandon Atwell, the drummer Tetyana Haraschuk and several pianists including Songah Chae. Take Effect Reviews gave it 8 out of 10 on December 20, 2022, Art & Culture Maven called it global jazz in which the bass becomes a lyrical solo instrument, and a JAZZIZ review quoted on his press page praised the duet "Kaelo".

In 2023 he played on Denielle Bassels' Little Bit a' Love, one of three bassists on a record that was nominated for a JUNO Award in 2024. The four-track Live at the Small World Centre EP, released in July 2023, captured the working band of the time with Jacqueline Teh on vocals, Allison Au, Jennifer Lo on piano, Jay Yoo on guitar and Andrew McCarthy on drums. In October 2023 his biography has him at Koerner Hall in Toronto for a Korean War Memorial Concert with the Seocho Philharmonia of Seoul and the Glenn Gould School Orchestra, conducted by Jong Hoon Bae, with the soprano Sumi Jo, the trumpeter Jens Lindemann and the pianist Matt Catingub.

Forbidden West (January 23, 2025, In The Sun Records, ITS-102) is his third album and the most direct statement of the Korean theme. All nine pieces are his, with lyrics by him, and the gayageum player Roa Lee, who has played the instrument since the age of seven, is part of the ensemble. Jacqueline Teh sings on eight tracks, Sangah Lee, a Korean music specialist trained at Ewha Womans University and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, guests on the opening "Wah Arirang" as vocalist and translator, and the band is completed by Allison Au on saxophone and flute, Todd Pentney on piano, Jay Yoo on guitar and Andrew McCarthy on drums. The label says the record brings in the gayageum, Korean rhythms, pansori-style singing and Korean melodies. Textura's review in February 2025 called it a bold East-West fusion and heard the closing "Letters" as perhaps a love letter from Lee to his heritage; The WholeNote reviewed it on April 4, 2025. It came out on CD and as a limited white and black splatter vinyl LP.

Lee describes the music of the Robert Lee Group as an attempt to celebrate Korean traditional music alongside his passion for jazz: he hopes to introduce jazz listeners to Korean sounds and instruments and to bring Korean traditional listeners to improvisation, and to celebrate Asian-identifying musicians in jazz and creative music. He has explored what it means to straddle two cultural identities as a Korean Canadian. The Toronto Arts Foundation named him a finalist for its Breakthrough Jazz Artist award in 2025. The Robert Lee Group's 2026 bookings included Global Jazz Sunday at the Rex in Toronto on March 15, the TD Victoria JazzFest at Encore in Victoria on June 22, and the TD Halifax Jazz Festival at The Carleton on July 11, with a line-up that changed between listings: Dennis Kwok on saxophone and John Lee on daegeum and janggu in Victoria, Roa Lee on gayageum at the Rex.

Lee describes his own style as modern jazz fed by folk, pop, spiritual music, metal and singer-songwriter music. In a 2019 interview he named Esperanza Spalding as an artist he admires for her constant evolution and Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band as one of his biggest influences. The publicity for Ascension adds the bands of Brian Blade and Christian McBride, the songwriting of Bon Iver and Iron & Wine, and the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Esperanza Spalding and McBride are both bassist-composers; the influence is as stated by Lee and his publicist, not something a recording credit shows.

The sound is chamber-like and song-oriented: wordless and lyric vocals, saxophone and flute, guitar and piano, with the bass carrying melody. The earliest EPs are labeled improvised chamber jazz on Bandcamp. From Cha-Ran onward the writing is built on Korean folk stories and poetry, and from Forbidden West it includes the gayageum, a piece titled "Wah Arirang" and, in some live line-ups, the daegeum and janggu. R&B and soul, folk and film music are listed in his bio as further ingredients. The records described here are jazz records, and no competing non-jazz career is documented.