Okkyung Lee: The Idea of Red and Grey and Yellow

Winner: 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award

John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series premieres a new work or set of works on the last Wednesday of every month by composers who push the envelope of possibility.

Okkyung Lee, a New York-based cellist and South Korea native, has created a body of work blurring genre boundaries through collaborations and compositions while testing the limit of contemporary cello performance techniques. Her music draws inspirations from noise and extended techniques, jazz, Western classical, and Korean traditional and popular music.

Since moving to New York in 2000, Okkyung’s unique approach to her instrument and improvisation led to collaborations with numerous artists such as Laurie Anderson, David Behrman, John Butcher, Chris Corsano, Mark Fell, Douglas Gordon, Vijay Iyer, Christian Marclay, Lasse Marhaug, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Bill Orcutt, Marina Rosenfeld, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, Swans, Cecil Taylor and John Zorn to name just a few.

As a composer, her recent work includes Cheol-Kkot-Sae (Steel Flower Bird) for 2 traditional Korean musicians and 5 improvisers, commissioned by SWR2 in Germany for Donaueschingen Music Festival in 2016, and still hoping for a miracle…? commissioned by Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway in 2017.

Okkyung was the recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2015 and a Foundation For Contemporary Arts Grant in 2010.