BORA YOON

 B O R A   Y O O N

- SOUND STORIES -     

Korean-American composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Bora Yoon is an interdisciplinary artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice and found objects and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries –  to formulate an audiovisual storytelling through music, movement and sound.

From site-specific works to music for dance, theater, multimedia happenings, and art galleries, Yoon’s work resonates with an extraordinarily diverse range of genres, communities, and collaborators including late poet Sekou Sundiata (The 51st (dream) state), Iceland-based electronic producer Ben Frost, visual artist Ann Hamilton (event of a thread), choreographers Yin Mei Dance and Noémie Lafrance, early music quartet New York Polyphony, video artist Adam Larsen, filmmaker H. Paul Moon, composer Michael Gordon (Lightning at Our Feet), SYMPHO directed by Paul Haas, DJ Spooky, guitarist Kaki King, live visualist Joshue Ott, the League of Electronic Musicians and Urban Robots, phonograph artist Aleks Kolkowski, Korean traditional dance and drumming artist Vong Pak, kinetic sculptor U-Ram Choe, data visualist R. Luke DuBois, Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad, amongst many others.  

Yoon has written new works for new music ensembles Alarm Will Sound, Sō Percussion, members of International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Metropolis Ensemble, Musica Viva, Young People’s Chorus of New York, Voices of Ascension, and the SAYAKA chorale of Tokyo.   Recordings are available through INNOVA Recordings, Popular Noise, Swirl Records, MIT Press, iTunes, (gr)Albums, and Naxos — and select scores through the Guild of Carilloneurs of North America, and Boosey & Hawkes Publishing.  

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Yoon’s music has been presented at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Singapore Arts Festival, the Nam Jun Paik Art Center (South Korea), MADE Festival (Sweden), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Park Avenue Armory, and Walker Art Center, among others -- and been a resident artist at institutions including Park Avenue Armory, Ringling Museum, the Hermitage, HERE Art Center/PROTOTYPE, League of Electronic Musicians and Urban Robots (LEMUR), and Harvestworks Digital Media.

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Yoon composed and performed a live original score to Haruki Murakami’s "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" directed by Stephen Earnhart (Edinburgh International Festival, Singapore Arts Festival) commissioned by Asia Society; written and performed  2-person opera Sunken Cathedral (produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Art Center, PROTOTYPE Festival) featuring Korean traditional dance and drumming artist Vong Pak; and as an improvisor and performer/composer, collaborates with multimedia artist R. Luke DuBois (bitforms Gallery) with ( (( PHONATION )) ) and ever-evolving experiments with technology and art.

Bora Yoon has been awarded a Music/Sound fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, United Artists Initiative, Asian American Arts Alliance, a recording grant from the Sorel Organization for Women Composers, and most recently received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as a New Music USA project grant. To follow the NM/USA project as it unfolds, visit the project page >> 

Classically trained and steeped in a first love of choral music, Yoon is fascinated by the intersection of space and sound, maps, human Venn diagrams, handsome sounding kitchenware, sonorities, and the pulleys and strings that hold everything together.   In all endeavors, she seeks to foster innovation of form in the arts, and its larger resonance in society.

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Instruments used in performance:  voice, violin, Tibetan singing bowls, cellphones, radios, water, bike bells, synthesizers, walkie-talkies, wind tubes, metronomes, Bible pages, spoons, found objects, viola through an octave dropping pedal to sound like a bass, piano, tin cans, field recordings, electronics, and particular acoustic and architectural features of the venue itself  (stage as instrument).  i.e. “things that make sound, and make sense together.”  She is a bel canto soprano, a professional psalmist and cantor, with perfect pitch, ninja sight reading skills, and a penchant for the peculiar.
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