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 thru music, movement and sound. Featured on the front-page of the Wall-Street Journal, 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, Bible pages, bike bells, turntable, walkie-talkies, chimes, water, and electronics. As a performer/composer, Yoon has presented her work at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Visiones Sonoras (Mexico), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Nam Jun Paik Museum (South Korea), PROTOTYPE Opera Theater Now Festival, Singapore Arts Festival — and served as a resident artist at EMPAC, The Hermitage, and TED Fellows. She has been commissioned new works for So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Cabrillo Orchestra, Voices of Ascension Chorus ; awarded by the New York Foundation of the Arts (Music/Sound), Asian American Arts Alliance; Princeton University, Fromm Foundation at Harvard Music, Barlow Endowment, & Opera America.
At MacDowell, composed the foundations for a 20-minute HUB New Music chamber ensemble commission (to premiere in 2028), a percussion solo for UCSD Emeritus Professor, Steven Schick (to premiere 2028), and string quartet "Methuselah" for the Delgani String Quartet for Year of Trees project (scheduled to premiere in April 2027). Yoon also made final revisions for chamber work "Shells/Spirits" for the Koussevitzsky Foundation and Library of Congress, an original commission for the Harlem Chamber Players, which premiered in NYC in March 2026.
