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Song Yi Jeon
She studied classical composition at the University of Music and Fine Art in Graz, Austria and Jazz vocals at the Music University in Basel, Switzerland where she developing her unique sound. Through her background in classical composition, she uses her understanding of harmonic structure to create incomparable improvisations.
Song YI's music is heavily influenced by instrumental Jazz Music, and her refined compositions have a clear musical direction with her signature 'east meets west' sound.
In 2013, as the inaugural Quincy Jones CJ&E fellow, she studied at the Berklee College of Music where she was also awarded the Billboard Endowed Award. Her teachers include many major artists including Lisa Thorson, Guillermo Klein, Jorge Rossy, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Tiger Okoshi and George Garzone amongst others.
In 2015, Song YI released her first album “Straight” in with her Quintet, featuring master Phil Grenadier on trumpet. She was also featured in Alain Mallet’s first Album with Jamey Haddad, and Peter Slavov. She has performed with many illustrious colleagues including Simon Shaheen, Billy Drewes, Guillermo Klein, Bill McHenry, Jeff Ballard, Vadim Neselovskyi, George Garzone, Tiger Okoshi, Mike Moreno, and many more.
Song YI recently made her Blue Note debut in New York to great acclaim. She has also played at many clubs/festivals including Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Falcoln, the Bitter End, Drom, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, Regattabar Courtyard Boston, Basel Clubfestival, Off Beat Jazzfestival Basel, Langnau Jazz festival and the Next Generation Jazz Festival Monterey.
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Seulah Noh Jazz Orchestra: NOhMAD
by Jack Bowers
On her debut album, NohMAD, South Korea-born, New England-educated Seulah Noh is listed as composer, arranger and conductor. She could be described as painter" too, as she uses her seventeen-piece orchestra (enlarged to twenty-one by strings on three numbers) as a palette on which to render sophisticated--and sometimes daring--portraits in sound that are generally progessive but seldom boring. Several impart an East Asian flavor, especially the three-movement Traveler's Suite, which presumably depicts Noh's long journey from Korea ...
read moreChase Kuesel: Space Between
by Bruce Lindsay
Drummer and composer Chase Kuesel is based in Brooklyn, but his debut release as leader, Space Between, arose from a year spent studying in Basel as part of a select group of young musicians funded through the Focusyear Artist Grant. It's an album that's notable for Kuesel's ambitious compositions--drawing on influences including Olivier Messiaen, Norma Winstone and Guillermo Klein, to whom Kuesel dedicates Axis (For GK)"--and for the stylish interpretations crafted by the drummer and his bandmates. Four ...
read moreSong Yi Jeon: Movement Of Lives
by Jerome Wilson
Song Yi Jeon is a vocalist from South Korea whose voice and music can be as ethereal as ectoplasm or as penetrating as a laser. She recalls the mystical flexibility of Sheila Jordan and the raucous improvisations of Patty Waters in her sound but comes up with her own brand of hypnotic beauty. On this CD, only two songs have lyrics--the opening track, the standard Invitation," and the closing track, a Korean folk song. On the rest, Jeon ...
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