Hailing originally from Korea, Okkyung Lee launched her path as an experimental cellist grounded in classical study before branching outward into improvisation, noise, jazz, and extended techniques. Across the years she has joined forces with numerous prominent figures from the noise and experimental improvisation communities, appearing on stage and in the studio alongside Nels Cline, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn. Although solo projects like the 2013 album Ghil convey the raw intensity of her live sets, she has also written more introspective chamber pieces, among them Yeo-Neun from 2020.
After leaving South Korea, Lee settled in Boston in 1993. She completed dual bachelor’s degrees in Contemporary Writing & Production and Film Scoring at the Berklee College of Music in 1998, then obtained a master’s degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory of Music in 2000. Once based in New York City, she recorded and performed with an array of improvisers, composers, and rock outfits that included Assif Tsahar, Butch Morris, and Raz Mesinai (Badawi). Her debut album, Nihm, came out on John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2005 and featured Ikue Mori, Trevor Dunn, and Sylvie Courvoisier. She further paired with experimental turntablist Christian Marclay for a split release alongside Italian improv duo My Cat Is an Alien, while her solo LP I Saw the Ghost of an Unknown Soul and It Said... surfaced on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! imprint in 2008.
A Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant awarded to Lee in 2010 supported international touring and new partnerships, leading to the Tzadik release Noisy Love Songs and work with Phil Minton, Evan Parker, and Anla Courtis. In 2013 the abrasive solo album Ghil—captured by Lasse Marhaug and distilled from extended improvisations—appeared on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ imprint; she also joined Marhaug and C. Spencer Yeh for Wake Up Awesome on Software. That same year she curated the 27th edition of the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, under the banner “The Most Beautiful Noise in the World,” after which further collaborations with Mark Fell, Chris Corsano, and Bill Orcutt reached the public.
Lee received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2015. Residencies followed at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, and she toured with Swans in 2016. The Northern Spy label issued Amalgam, another project with Marclay, that year. Several albums arrived in 2018: Dahl-Tah-Ghi on Pica Disk, taped live at the Emanuel Vigelang Mausoleum in Oslo during 2013; the Tzadik-issued Cheol-Kkot-Sae (Steel.Flower.Bird), a long-form work fusing noise and improvisation with Korean traditional music; The Air Around Her, a duet with drone and long-string instrument specialist Ellen Fullman; and Speckled Stones and Dissonant Green Dots, which integrates computer-generated and analog synthesizer textures.
Shelter Press brought out Lee’s chamber-quartet composition Yeo-Neun in 2020, quickly ranking among her most celebrated recordings. Her piece “Teum (The Silvery Slit)” featured on a split LP with Hecker issued by Portraits GRM in 2021.
