Okkyung Lee

Korean musician based in the USA (born 1975 in Daejeon, South Korea).
She arrived in Boston in 1993 and studied classical piano and cello. Lee first heard of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and other jazz greats when she came to Berklee College Of Music. She quickly bought CDs to listen to the music she was trying to understand. After graduating from Berklee in 1998 with a dual degree in contemporary writing and production and film scoring, and then earning a master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music, Lee moved to New York City in 2000.
She soon became part of a downtown scene stretching the conventions of music. The recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in 2010 and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2015, Lee is known for a sound that draws on her traditional roots and then freely improvises.
Since 2016, she has led an ensemble called Yeo-Neun Quartet, featuring Maeve Gilchrist (harp), Jacob Sacks (piano) and Eivynd Opsvik (bass). A part of her work with this ensemble, which is influenced by traditional Korean music, is featured on her album Yeo-Neun, released in 2020 on Shelter Press.