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Cell phone musician Bora Yoon performs at Time Warner Center's Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Friday.
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"A cell phone is as good an instrument as a piano," says Bora Yoon, a 27-year-old Korean-American who is becoming famous for playing the portable phone as a musical instrument. On Friday Yoon performed at the Time Warner Center's Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, the dream stage for aspiring jazz artists.
The performance sponsored by Samsung Electronics proved that cell phones can indeed serve as high-tech instruments. Violinist and vocalist Yoon used the tones of the phone's keys, and combined them with piano, violin, xylophone and loudspeaker sounds. The music, on top of her bright purple dress and the night view of Central Park outside the concert hall, impressed the audience.
"As an artist, I'm inspired by all kinds of sounds. Each and every cell phone key sound is unique, just like piano keyboards, so the phone is a portable piano for me," Yoon says. Yoon owns 11 phones that she uses for her compositions.
Born in Chicago, the second generation Korean-American won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest after which she moved to New York and studied experimental and acoustic music at Ithaca College. She currently performs at venues such as the Downtown Club in Manhattan.
In an article about Yoon in May, the Wall Street Journal said, "Cellphones are a notorious audience distraction at musical performances -- ringing, buzzing and beeping and giving conductors fits. But for some avant-garde electronic artists, cellphones themselves are musical instruments that can be incorporated into rock, hip-hop and even modern classical music."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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