Yongbom Lee

Continuous Deformation is the portrait CD of Yongbom Lee, whose music is made of continuous streams of sound and a finely balanced interplay between instruments and electronics. Shaped by his intercultural background, Lee is drawn to the meeting points and distances between contrasting ideas, such as the foreign and the familiar, or the conscious and the unconscious. Five works, written for ensembles, sampler and electronics, make up the album.

Stasis Field was recorded live by Hessischer Rundfunk at the Alte Oper Frankfurt on 15 December 2023. It is played by Ensemble Modern and the IEMA Ensemble 2023/24 with ensemble recherche, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer. Most of the other pieces were recorded on 10-12 June 2024 at the Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal in Cologne, coproduced with the German Music Council. Broken Frames Syndicate plays under Lautaro Mura Fuentealba, and the cellist Kyubin Hwang plays the title piece with Lee at the electronics. Lee produced that recording himself. The booklet text is by Leonie Reineke.

Imaginary Rooms I-IV, for flute and bass flute, violin, cello, double bass and percussion, is performed by ensemble recherche. It moves between a progressive narrative and fragmentary snapshots. Dépaysement I-II, for ensemble and sampler, again holds opposing ideas side by side. The first movement gives the musicians improvisational freedom, while the second is written in a strictly traditional way. Continuous Deformation, for cello and electronics, reflects Lee's engagement with neuroscience. It links the performer's sound production with brain activity, and leads the listener through landscapes of overtones.

Reineke sees ambiguity as a thread running through all the compositions, tied to the focus on spaces. She notes suspended states, associative developments as in dreams, and musical situations in which anything can grow out of anything else. A Little Night Music, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and prepared piano, closes the programme.

CD, Wergo WER 6447 2, released in 2025 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik, with a 32-page booklet in German and English.