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BORA YOON

“…one of the most exciting creators working in the field of sound and performance today.”
– Creators Project 

“totally unique.. ..expect the unexpected” 
– KoreAm Journal

“mesmerizing” – New York Times

"TOWER" w/ SYMPHO, directed by Paul Haas, Oliver Ranch Foundation, Sonoma CA
Live at Visiones Sonoras, Morelia Mexico
Still from Sunken Cathedral, PROTOTYPE Festival 2015
Bora Yoon + Alarm Will Sound, premiere of 'Casual Miracles' song cycle in development
Bora Yoon + Alarm Will Sound, premiere of 'Casual Miracles' developing song cycle
Haruki Murakami's "Wind Up Bird Chronicle", Edinburgh International Festival,
Live w/ live visualist + media artist R. Luke DuBois, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico
"Sons Nouveaux" at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Live at Visiones Sonoras w/ Joshue Ott [Interval Studios], Morelia Mexico
Ensemble Decipher: Cat’s Cradle
59:26
Roulette Intermedium

Ensemble Decipher: Cat’s Cradle

This performance is presented live in Roulette's theater in Downtown Brooklyn. Roulette’s mission is to support artists creating new and adventurous art in all disciplines by providing them with a venue and resources to realize their creative visions and to build an audience interested in the evolution of experimental art. Enjoy what you see? Please 'like' this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Every 'like' and subscribe helps us continue to provide high quality, accessible content. Thank you so much for your support. View our full calendar of events: https://roulette.org/calendar/ Support us here: https://roulette.org/support/ __________ https://roulette.org/event/ensemble-decipher-cats-cradle/ For the opening of its 2023-24 season, Ensemble Decipher will continue its principal mission of highlighting incredible compositional voices working with new and vintage technologies by premiering a new work by Bora Yoon commissioned by the ensemble featuring a giant, electronically interactive version of the classic string-based game cat’s cradle. Decipher will also present works that have grown out of interdisciplinary collaborations with other artists and technologists, including the New York premieres of new works commissioned from composer-performer Erin Rogers and Lyn Goeringer and the world premiere of an expanded version of their co-created dance work with Iranian-American choreographer Hiva Sedaghat titled The Sound Sleep Has Been Shattered. Ensemble Decipher Joseph Bohigian — laptop, papier-mâché, tethers, keyboard Robert Cosgrove — laptop, tethers, percussion Eric Lemmon — laptop, tethers, live mixing Chelsea Loew — laptop, egg orb, tethers, vocals Taylor Long — laptop, cow rib bone, tethers, percussion Niloufar Nourbakhsh — laptop, planchette, tethers, no-input mixing and feedback Guest collaborator Hiva Sedaghat — choreographer, dance performer

 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.

Featured on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal and in the National Endowment for the Arts podcast for her musical innovations, Yoon’s music has been presented at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Singapore Arts Festival, the Nam Jun Paik Art Center (South Korea), the TED stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Banff Centre for Art and Creativity, MADE Festival (Sweden), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Walker Art Center, Broad Museum (LA), Park Avenue Armory, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and universities worldwide.  

From full symphonic and choral works, to performing solo on the TED stage as a vocalist/multi-instrumentalist – Yoon creates wide-ranging works of music for dance, theater, film, multimedia performance, site-specific works with architecture, and new media.  Yoon’s work resonates with a wide and diverse range of genres, communities, industries, and collaborators including So Percussion, King Britt, Alarm Will Sound, Samsung Telecommunications America, Samsung Anycall (Korea), DJ Spooky, indie-guitarist Kaki King, Harlem-born poet Sekou Sundiata (The 51st (dream) state), Iceland-based electronic producer Ben Frost, French-Canadian director/choreographer Noémie Lafrance, Chinese choreographer Yin Mei Dance, SYMPHO directed by Paul Haas, Bang On A Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, live graphics artist Joshue Ott, wax phonograph artist Aleks Kolkowski, visual artist Ann Hamilton, kinetic sculptor U-Ram Choe, filmmakers H. Paul Moon (Zen Violence Films) and Adam Larsen, Ellen Fullman (creator of the Long String Instrument), and NPR / WNYC's Jad Abumrad (Radiolab). 

 

Yoon composed the original score to Haruki Murakami’s "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" (Edinburgh International Festival, Singapore Arts Festival; commissioned by Asia Society); created the music for podcast MIGRATION WATCH [Wire Magazine UK], and docufilm "Faces of Seoul" by Gina Kim.  Yoon has composed new works for Sympho, Metropolis Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Sō Percussion, the NJ Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva, Voices of Ascension Chorus & Orchestra, Young People’s Chorus of New York, Modern Medieval, and the SAYAKA Ladies Consort of Tokyo.  Recordings are available through INNOVA Recordings, Journal of Popular Noise, MIT Press, (gr)Albums, and Naxos — with select scores available through Boosey & Hawkes. 

 

As a composer/performer, she created and performed in 2-person opera Sunken Cathedral (produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Art Center, PROTOTYPE Festival) with Korean traditional dance and drumming artist Vong Pak; and collaborates with data artist R. Luke DuBois (bitforms Gallery) in continually evolving explorations of technology and art.  Forthcoming segments include new interactive gesture performance integrating Mi.Mu glove controllers, with gesture, voice, and hybrid new media performance.

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, New Music USA project grant -- and been a resident artist at institutions including Park Avenue Armory, Ringling Museum, the Hermitage, HERE Arts / PROTOTYPE, LEMUR, and Harvestworks Digital Media, and Virginia Tech.  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.

Upcoming projects include a new evening-length work PHONO KINETIC for the high-density wavefield synthesis and kinetic performance feat. custom instrument design by Joshue Ott [superDraw] at EMPAC - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; a new developing Asian opera '아가씨' Handmaiden, featuring libretto by poet E.J. Koh [Pachinko, Magical Language of Others] supported by OPERA AMERICA, and a new multimedia installation / kinetic sculpture / performacne work 'Cat's Cradle' for Ensemble Decipher -- premiering at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn NYC in October 2023 made possible with support from the Barlow Endowment and Harvard Music Fromm Foundation.   

 

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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 pedal to become a bass, piano, tin cans, field recordings, electronics, and particular acoustic / architectural features of the venue itself.  i.e. “things that make sound, and make sense together” -- which weave a larger sensory storytelling through music, sound, and scale. 
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Download CV >>>
Press Downloads >>>

Electronic Press Kit >>>
List of Works >>>

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News Beats

OPERA AMERICA awards Discovery Grant to Bora Yoon for new Asian opera based on South Korean queer cinema thriller Handmaiden, dir. by Park Chan-Wook. 

TIME:SPANS Festival dates announced!  Featuring new wavefield synthesis works by Pamela Z, Miya Masaoka, Nina C. Young and Bora Yoon

May 22, 2021

February 11, 2021

Washington Post features Bora Yoon as in '23 artists to watch in 2023' in list of new music and classical composers.  Read more >> 

Guild of Carilloneurs North America publishes carillon and electronics work, 'SOUNDFIELDS: Celestine'.  Available now in their diverse catalog. More info >> 

January 20, 2023

January, 2023

Harvard Music awards Fromm Foundation award to Bora Yoon and Ensemble Decipher for new work in Fall 2023.

March 18, 2023

Boosey & Hawkes now carrying 'Semaphore Conductus' by Bora Yoon for spatial acoustic surround choir and electronics

January 5, 2021

Upcoming Events

  • Seattle Symphony Octave 9 series presents ( ((PHONATION )) ) w/ Joshue Ott
    Seattle Symphony Octave 9 series presents ( ((PHONATION )) ) w/ Joshue Ott
    Fri, Oct 25
    Seattle
    Oct 25, 2024, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM PDT
    Seattle, Union St, Seattle, WA 98101, USA
    Oct 25, 2024, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM PDT
    Seattle, Union St, Seattle, WA 98101, USA
    Share
  • Mandala Lab (ongoing)
    Mandala Lab (ongoing)
    Open hours
    Rubin Museum NYC
    Open hours
    Rubin Museum NYC, 150 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011, USA
    Open hours
    Rubin Museum NYC, 150 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011, USA
    Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art presents the Mandala Gong Lab -- envisioned by curator Tim McHenry, to transfer energy and anger into mirror-like wisdom. Gongs donated by Peter Gabriel, Evelyn Glennie, Sheila E., Huang Ruo, Sarah Hennies, Shivamani, and scent library/video story by Laurie Anderson.
    Share

Contact

Worldwide Management & Booking
Sozo Artists, Inc.
New York City
borayoon@sozomedia.com
TEL/SMS: +1 917-791-3680

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