Bora Yoon

Artist Information

Biography

. : b o r a y o o n is a performance artist, composer, and multi-instrumental sound architect.

Innovating everyday found objects, ancient and traditional instruments, and electronics in various permutations and sound environments, she currently tours her experimental soundwork with poet Sekou Sundiata (the 51st (dream) state, BAM Next Wave Festival, Walker Art Center, Melbourne Intl. Arts Festival), tabla artist Suphala (protégé of Zakhir Hussein), and DJ Spooky (Subliminal Strings, Festival Sons D'Hiver) —and has performed with Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble members, guitarist Kaki King (Velour Music, Sony), members of Bang On A Can All Stars, NY Fringe, multimedia artist Luke Dubois (Harvestworks, Columbia), and beatbox artists Adam Matta and Taylor McFerrin.

Original works include live acoustic stereophonic sound-murals for 7 sopranos on bicycles in Brooklyn's 55,000 sq. ft. empty McCarren Pool for site-specific dance piece Agora II, the live sound score for aerial dance piece Rapture on Frank Gehry architecture with choreographer Noémie Lafrance, and has performed internationally from Melbourne to Paris to New York including the Guggenheim Museum, Carnegie Hall, Tonic, John Zorn's The Stone, Roselee Goldberg's PERFORMA Arts Biennial, MTV Networks, and universities across the country. She has curated performers for the experimental music/film SummerScreen series, premiered a new one-woman experimental opera by Paul Steven Ray, and has garnered awards from the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Billboard, and the Arion Music Award committee.

Future plans include designing a site-specific choral piece featuring the acoustics of Lincoln Center Plaza, collaborations with Tod Machover (MIT Music & Media Lab), the Seoul Arts Festival in Korea, and forthcoming EP Sons Nouveau due for release in August 2007.


[BMI] [GRAMMY / Recording Academy Member]

"... she's like music...with a body." --Allison Sniffin (Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble, multiphonic phonator)

"... a digital wonderwoman.." -- Sekou Sundiata

"...my new favorite thing in the whole world." -- Kaki King

Instrumentation

Bora Yoon :: vox, electric violin, musicbox, Tibetan singing bowl, cell phones, water, keys, guitar, live samples and loops

Discography

Sound Nouveau [2006] -- soundscape EP -- Kaki King tour, December 2006

Proscenium [2003]*-- Award winning 2nd full-length solo album

apArtments [2001] -- local compilation of great and varied artists in Upstate New York.

JAAM [2000] -- Mutant Soul Records, Experimental jazz/trip-hop album, featured track w/ Access 58 (UK) and Gerd (Netherlands).

Bora Yoon [1999]* -- Debut solo album

* available at Apple iTunes and http://www.cdbaby.com.


M E D I A

.: 'Molten Lava' Music Video [Yellowbird Productions, NYC]
--broadcast on MTV Networks and MTV Labs.


.:Womyn Unsilenced: Award winning documentary on the lives of 5 women


H O N O R S & A W A R D S

.: Winner of the 2002 International John Lennon Songwriting Contest

.: Winner of the 11th annual Billboard Songwriting Contest (Jazz Division)

.: Arion Music Award recipient

Links

• PLINKO // Cellphone Symphony Video Clip (full)
• b o r a y o o n // MySpace
• Wall Street Journal // Bora Yoon // PLINKO
• YTN // Korea News Broadcast Feature
• Korea Times // Los Angeles 6/07

Audio

• Sons Nouveau // LIVE at BAM
  Listen  
• PLINKO: a Cellphone Symphony
  Listen  
• VÖKURÓ w/ Melodia Women's Choir
  Listen  
• Poetry vs. Coincidence (Billboard jazz winner)
  Listen  
• Molten Lava
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Poetry vs. Coincidence
• VÖKURÓ
• Molten Lava

Video

PLINKO : live at Brooklyn Academy of Music

Photo Gallery

Press

• Village Voice
  

  "...magical in the resonant space..."

• The New Yorker [+ Show ]
  

  The site-specific choreographer Noémie LaFrance returns to the vast, empty pool in Greenpoint’s McCa...The site-specific choreographer Noémie LaFrance returns to the vast, empty pool in Greenpoint’s McCarren Park. This time, to fill the massive space, LaFrance’s troupe teams with dancers from Streb, the Young Dance Collective, Celeste Hastings and the Butoh Rockettes, and many others, and select audience participants, who perform unison moves they’ve learned in advance on the Web site.
  
  Bora Yoon directs the live music as dancers swarm the pool and the featured characters—including an astronaut, a waitress, a butcher, and a roller skater—emerge. Meanwhile, a beat-boxer flies by on a bicycle, a stuntwoman breaks boards, a bunch of movers carry furniture, and people dash in with buckets of water, filling an inflatable pool.

• Muse Magazine [+ Show ]
  

  "...continues to alternately baffle and tease the human mind and soul with her witty lyrics and insp..."...continues to alternately baffle and tease the human mind and soul with her witty lyrics and inspirational vocals...
  
  ...How can one begin to describe what it's like to listen to Bora Yoon? It is an experience which comes from every corner of the known world and still ends up sounding like the quietly-intoned, personal, heart-felt message of a small, quiet girl in the middle of that swirling whirpool which is our Earth.
  
  But to say that she is quiet is not to say that she sounds quiet. Bora's gripping voice soars as appropriately as it needs to and simultaneously whispers when we need it the most. The quietude, therefore, is not a quality of her voice but the essence of her entire sound.
  
  It's a quiet thought that creeps by unheard and then winds its way into your heart when you least expect it. Before you know what's going on, you're being moved by this epic musical tapestry that was woven in front of your living eyes. And you'll never be able to step away from that vision again."

• NOISE Art Magazine [+ Show ]
  

  "...operatic and intense, genre-scrambling and iconoclastic... She's wordy, confessional, poetic in ..."...operatic and intense, genre-scrambling and iconoclastic... She's wordy, confessional, poetic in a way that doesn't involve a lot of rhyming. Meaning her music is smart and different and, measured against the general run of people who sing and song-write, a cut or three above the rest."

• .
  

  "....a digital wonderwoman." "some kind of spooky girl.."

• . [+ Show ]
  

  "Proscenium is magic... conceptually elegant, instrumentally intimate, lyrically cathartic, fierce, ..."Proscenium is magic... conceptually elegant, instrumentally intimate, lyrically cathartic, fierce, healing, revealing, and mmmhmm-inducing poetry (I said poetry) from head to toe. It's music you can cry to, climb to and grind to and yes, I've done all three so far. Her artistry is surging and strong..."

• . [+ Show ]
  

  "These days it's still a radical act for a woman to stand up and speak her truth; yet without these ..."These days it's still a radical act for a woman to stand up and speak her truth; yet without these 'rebels', the story never changes. Bora Yoon breaks the silence with her brave and honest songwriting. Another s/hero in the making..."

• The Ithacan 4.4.02 [+ Show ]
  

  Yoon's music is tinged with the familiarity of decades of women singers. But her compositions are so...Yoon's music is tinged with the familiarity of decades of women singers. But her compositions are so compelling, her playing so skilled, that it’s difficult to find that familiarity unappealing. Yoon plays songs full of rhythm in words and instrumental asides, but her voice leads them in such a way that it’s like getting lost for five minutes in a river of soft water — it flows over and off you quickly but stays on your skin long after you’ve left. She’s got a voice that’s as addicting as the opening guitar lick to "Freebird" and finishes every other song with a laugh that says, "Well, that was fun." This and frequent lyrical standouts are elements of the vivacious, sharp personality with which she can knock out an audience."

• . [+ Show ]
  

  "...An uplifting, empathetic sensibility and a fearless command of her voice... innovative beyond he..."...An uplifting, empathetic sensibility and a fearless command of her voice... innovative beyond her years."

• .
  

  "..she's like Music. with a body."

Setlist

// SELECT PERFORMANCES
Carnegie Hall, Isaac Stern Auditorium, NYC
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC
Angel Orensantz Foundation of the Arts, NYC
St. John the Divine Cathedral, NYC
The Gatehouse : Aaron Davis Hall, NYC
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center NYC
Symphony Space, NYC

Black + White Gallery, Chelsea NYC
Museum of Jewish Heritage
Rubin Museum, NYC
Leslie-Lohmann Gallery
Stephen Weiss / DKNY Studio, NYC
John Zorn's STONE, NYC
Tonic, NYC

McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn NY
Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn NY
Monkeytown Art Space, Brooklyn NY

Spiegeltent, Bard College, New York
The Collective Unconscious, NYC
The Knitting Factory, NYC
Makor NYC
HERE Arts Center, NYC
The Rotunda, Philadelphia PA
Mahaiwe Arts Centre, Great Barrington MA
Zeiterion Theatre, New Bedford MA
The Hothouse, Chicago IL
State Theatre, NJ
West One Four, London UK
Acoustic Cafe, SoHo London UK
The Rock Garden, Covent Garden, London UK
Thor's Pub, Marseilles France
Melheur, Berlin Germany


// FESTIVALS / BENEFITS
Melbourne International Arts Festival 2006
Festival Sons D'Hiver 2006 | Paris
NEXTWAVE Festival 2006 | BAM
Performa 05 Bienniale
Performa 07 White on White
Brooklyn NEXT Festival 2007 | BAM
SilkScreen Asian Film Festival 2007
Naked Eye MIX NYC Film Festival 2006
Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2006
ACRIA Foundation, 2006
Amnesty International, NYC 2004


COLLEGES // UNIVERSITIES:
Clarice Smith Center for the Arts, Univ. of MD,
Power Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford University, CA
Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA
Carolina Performing Arts, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Summerscape, Bard College, NY
Cornell University
Dartington College of the Arts, UK
New School University
Skirball Center, New York University


// RESIDENCY
Dartington College of the Arts, Devon England UK
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN


TOUR // COLLABORATION
Suphala | tabla protégé of Zakhir Hussein
DJ Spooky | Subliminal Strings
Sekou Sundiata | 51st (dream) state
Kaki King | Sony, Velour
Noemie Lafrance, choreographer | AGORA II
Adam Matta | beatbox artist


// SHARED PERFORMANCES
Lou Reed
Laurie Anderson
Meshell Ndgeocello
Polyphonic Tibetan Monks of Drepulung Monastary
Sussan Deyhim
Odetta
Dr. Ruth
King Britt

Basic Requirements

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