about

a native of korea, okkyung lee has been developing her own voice in a contemporary cello performance, improvisation and composition. with her solid classical training as a foundation, she incorporates jazz, sounds, korean traditional music, and noise with extended techniques to create her unique blend of music.

since moving to new york in 2000, she has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as laurie anderson, carla bozulich, john butcher, nels cline, chris corsano, axel dörner, john edwards,  carlos giffoni, vijay iyer, urs leimgruber, thurston moore, ikue mori, lawrence d. “butch” morris, evan parker, wadada leo smith, tyshawn sorey, c spencer yeh and john zorn to name a few.

okkyung has released the following albums: noisy love songs (for george dyer) and nihm on tzadik; the bleeding edge with evan parker and peter evans on psi; duo lp anicca with phil minton for dancing wayang solo cello album i saw the ghost of an unknown soul and it said… on ecstatic peace!; a duo recording with christian marclay, rubbings on my cat is an alien (lp)/ a silnet place (cd); check for monsters with steve beresford and peter evans on emanem. recently she finished working n a duo with paul lytton and another duo albums with john edwards.

she has received a composer commission from new york state council on the arts in 2007 and foundation for contemporary arts grant in 2010.