Bora Yoon
Bora Yoon is a Korean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice, and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries to formulate a storytelling through music, movement and sound. Featured on the front-page of the Wall-Street Journal, WIRE magazine, NPR, TED, and the National Endowment for the Arts podcast for her use of unusual instruments and everyday found objects as music, she evokes what George Lewis describes as “a kind of sonic memory garden” – using voice, viola, Tibetan singing bowls, vocoder, Bible pages, bike bells, turntable, walkie-talkies, chimes, water, and electronics.
Yoon has presented her work at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Nam Jun Paik Museum (South Korea), Visiones Sonoras (Mexico), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), PROTOTYPE Opera Theater Now Festival with HERE Arts and Beth Morrison Projects; and has been commissioned by ensembles Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, members of International Contemporary Ensemble, SAYAKA Ladies Chorale of Tokyo, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Princeton University Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival, and Grammy-nominated Voices of Ascension. As a composer/performer she has provided the live score for Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle– an interdisciplinary theatre adaptation, co-commissioned by Asia Society, Baryshnikov Art Center, Edinburgh International Arts Festival, and Singapore Arts Festival in addition to original music within Apple TV+’s PACHINKO, based on the NY Times bestselling novel by Min Jin Lee. She recently completed her doctorate at Princeton University and has been newly appointed as an assistant professor of music composition at Reed College.
Current projects include a multimedia opera adaptation of the South Korean queer cinema thriller Handmaiden starring an all-Asian cast and writing team, and a new immersive experimental media song cycle PHONO KINETIC featuring interactive visuals and gesture control movement graphics by Joshue Ott, directed by Ashley Tata, which premiered at the Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY in March 2023. Upcoming projects include new works for percussionist Steve Schick, the Cabrillo Festival, and intermedia laptop group Ensemble Decipher with support from the Barlow Foundation and Fromm Foundation from Harvard Music. www.borayoon.com
