“Written in 2003, On a Windy Day was inspired by wind chimes in Buddhist temples set deep in the mountains of Korea, where I used to visit as a child. I vaguely remember one afternoon hearing the chimes start to ring so softly and randomly that at first I didn’t even notice them. Then the wind got gustier and gustier, and the chimes got louder and faster along with the sound of leaves on the trees surrounding the temple, eventually creating this mass of loud, intense, intricate sound. Then, as soon as the wind calmed down, everything went back to its serene surroundings, yet left me with all those tingling sounds lasting in my ears.

“To emulate this experience, I wrote a descriptive score for metallic percussion and had it performed live a few times by various players; the end result was never satisfactory. However, as soon as I heard John Hollenbeck’s incredible interpretation of this score in a studio, I was more than ecstatic. An idea came to me to add Ikue Mori’s unique electronic sounds and bring even more depth and surrealism to the piece. The final recording is better than I’d ever imagined and feels just like revisiting that windy day from my long-gone childhood.”

[Okkyung Lee]

Okkyung Lee (b. 1975) is a composer and cellist whose music fuses her classical training with improvisation, jazz, traditional Korean music, and noise. Lee was born and raised in Daejon, Korea, and attended arts schools in Seoul. In 1993 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied at Berklee College of Music and with Hankus Netsky at the New England Conservatory of Music. Since relocating to New York City in 2000, Lee has been very active in the downtown music scene, performing and recording with artists such as Derek Bailey, Nels Cline, Anthony Coleman, Shelley Hirsch, Eyvind Kang, Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Jim O’Rourke, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, and John Zorn, among others.

• Okkyung Lee – On a Windy Day (2003), for percussion and electronics