Okkyung Lee
Cellist Okkyung Lee is one of the most dynamic forces in improvised music today, a fearless and powerful performer whose playing incorporates a love of noise, extended technique and elements from the outer fringes of contemporary composition. A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in a contemporary cello performance and improvisation, and holds dual bachelor’s degrees in film scoring/contemporary writing & production from Berklee College of Music, and master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music.
Cellist Okkyung Lee is one of the most dynamic forces in improvised music today, a fearless and powerful performer whose playing incorporates a love of noise, extended technique and elements from the outer fringes of contemporary composition. A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in a contemporary cello performance and improvisation, and holds dual bachelor’s degrees in film scoring/contemporary writing & production from Berklee College of Music, and master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music.
Obelisk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Universally acclaimed as a pioneer in live laptop electronics, Ikue’s signature style is still uniquely her own and has influenced two generations of laptop performers. Her new band project Obelisk is a super-band featuring three of the most acclaimed and original players in the Downtown scene—Okkyung Lee, Jim Black and Sylvie Courvoisier. Ikue’s startling compositions blend gorgeous melodies with hypnotic rhythms and evocative soundscapes. Strange and beaut…
Seven ElectroAcoustic Septet
UK multi-reed master Evan Parker brings an all-star electroacoustic septet to the 2014 Victoriaville Festival for the massive and wonderfully detailed two part composition "Seven", performed with Peter Evans, Okkyung Lee, George Lewis, Ikue Mori, Sam Pluta, and Ned Rothenberg.
Two Duos
Tip! “Two Duos” is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee’s most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it’s magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities. On the A side Noetinger’s opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner …
나를 (Na-Reul)
Extremely personal and passionate, cellist Okkyung Lee recorded this album after separation from her instrument for months; the 9 pieces are layered with strings, instrument sounds, voice and with profound timing, creating an intensely beautiful album reflecting the anguish and loss of the time.
Yeo-Neun
** Small repress, absolutely astounding! ** Anyone encountering the efforts of the cellist, Okkyung Lee, faces an unavoidable truth. She’s an unreckonable force. Few players in the contemporary landscape relinquish themselves so completely to the practice of free improvisation, adapt with such ease without sacrificing the distinctions of self, or exist in the moment so completely, not to mention her awe inspiring technical skill. Her latest LP, Yeo-Neun, issued by Shelter Press, stands as tower…
Statistique Synthetique / Teum (The Silvery Slit)
The Third release on GRM's new "Portraits GRM" series, an offshoot of "Recollection GRM" geared towards more recent commissions for the pioneering French experimental outfit
The Air Around Her
140g black vinyl. 380gsm reverse board outer sleeve. 300gsm printed inner sleeve. This record documents music made by two women — one American and one Korean — who have both made a profound impact within experimental music. Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument has been a long-term life-work of incredible ambition and dedication. It is immediate, exciting and inspirational. Okkyung Lee has completed rewritten the possibilities for the cello in solo and group improvisation whilst maintaining a s…
Cheol-Kkot-Sae (Steel.Flower.Bird)
Cellist Okkyung Lee explores her Korean roots in an amazing long-form composition combining electronics, improvisation, composed melodies and noise with Korean traditional music, performed with the superb ensemble of John Edwards (bass), Ches Smith (drums), John Butcher (sax), Jae Hyo Chang (Korean percussion), Song Hee Kwon (Pansori singing), and Lasse Marhaug (electronics).
The piece unfolds like a ritual, making these disparate and unusual pairings seem totally organic and natural. Performed …
Dahl-Tah-Ghi
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer, and improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive app…
Live at White Cube
In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cube. Each performance over the course of the exhibition will be recorded, pressed and screen-printed live inside the gallery. This performance is from Okkyung Lee.A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in contemporary cel…
Amalgam
2016 release. A wild and exciting duo between cellist Okkyung Lee and legendary turntable improviser Christian Marclay performing live at London's Cafe Oto for a single long track that runs through an astonishing dynamic of invention and atmospheres in a gripping and spellbinding set. "May 2014, arriving home after hearing the Café Oto performance now released as Amalgam, I began to write. Over time the text developed, augmented by relevant dreams, literature and boxing metaphors, to become inte…
Jukebox-Series 006
Trost continues its Trost Jukebox Series of 7"s. Okkyung Lee - cello; Lasse Marhaug - electronics. Recorded at Lasse's studio in Oslo. No overdubs, minimal editing. Mastered by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.
Live at Cafe Oto
The full recording of the first meeting between Bill Orcutt (USA) and Okkyung Lee (South Korea). Individually these players have focused on an idiosyncratic approach to their chosen instruments and technique. Okkyung is one of the most singular voices to compromise the cello's classical origin, while Orcutt has spent many years developing a unique abstraction of traditional guitar blues. Live at Cafe OTO is an uncompromising combination of these individual elements and an ecstatic improvised ass…
Ghil
2015 repress (yuppie!). A native of Korea, cellist/composer Okkyung Lee has been developing her unique voice in both improvised and composed music by blending her wide interests and influences. Since moving to New York in 2000, she has worked with numerous artists ranging from Laurie Anderson, David Behrman, Douglas Gordon, Vijay Iyer, Christian Marclay, Jim O'Rourke, Evan Parker, and John Zorn, just to name a few, while leading her own projects and releasing more than 20 albums and touring…
Cold/Burn
Superstar live drone fiesta time here. Recorded in Oslo, during an Aurora Borealic night of January, 2010, this beauty thrums with a majesty-vibe arising deep from within the earth. Each of the participants has been horn-blown around the globe for mastery of individual string/machine attack. C. Spencer Yeh's violin arcs have powered a million strange improv scenes. Jon Wesseltoft is clearly the king of Norwegian harmonium dudes. Okkyung Lee is a Korean polymath re: formal cello innovations, …
Live At Stone
The trio of Chris Corsano (drums), Okkyung Lee (cello) and Bill Nace (guitar) performing live at John Zorn's NYC improv club The Stone in 2014, three free improvising titans of the modern age in a very limited LP
Piper
*200 copies limited release* Another stringed drone ritual here - but less choral than the quartet session - where the cello and the harmonium (or the accordion organ) are endlessly chasing each other aiming to the perfect sinergy around the same tune, resulting in a deep and intense meditation practice. Exquisitely mixed and mastered by Jon Wesseltoft in Oslo, 2013. A single nineteen minute track captured live in Oslo, 2010 in the same period of the astonishing Cold Burn LP (Feeding Tube Record…
Wake Up Awesome
The second chapter of SStudios (Software Studio Series). SStudios is a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition.…
White Cable, Black Wires
A stunning series of duo improvisations from two of the world's finest string players, whose shared dynamism and intensity of purpose produces fluid, powerful music that ranges from dense viscosity to swift effervescence.With all-strings improvisation there's often a danger of pseudo-classicism, of sounding vaguely like modernist chamber music, replete with refined flourishes and familiar motifs. Edwards and Lee don't just avoid this but go nowhere near it, heading off in another direction entir…
From The Earth To The Spheres Vol. 6
My Cat Is An Alien also share a split CD with Turntable-manipulator Christian Marclay and cellist Okkyung Lee, and it is their live collaboration “Rubbing” that opens the album. Full of disjointed sounds, scratches and stabs of cello, the piece is a rollercoaster of sonic experimentation, the two players complementing each other to create a wonderfully playful piece of music. After A tentative sounding opening “Beyond The Limit Of The Stars/Beyond The Limit Of The Grooves” Slowly begins to becom…