CAMDEN, Maine — On a day of some heavy topics like disease, climate change and the world’s seed stocks in decline (below), it was a welcome dose of levity when pan-instrumentalist performer Bora Yoon asked if everyone could please turn on their cellphones.
Winner of the 2002 John Lennon Songwriting Contest — from a panel that year that must have been leaning more in the direction of the experimental Beatle’s The Wedding Album or Life with the Lions than it was, say, “In My Life” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” — Yoon treated the 500+ crowd of PopTech attendees to an audience participation number (“Plinko”) she led on a trio of cellphones. All were encouraged to call each other and add their own boops and bips to the electronic din.
An avant-garde musician with a gorgeous voice, Yoon gave a ten minute performance that was timed just about right. Enough to muse over that wild cellphone choir as well as instruments as diverse as a Tibetan singing bowl, digital sampler and swishing and swirling water. But not too much so as to wonder, “Hey, haven’t we heard that ringtone before?”
Your mileage, of course, may vary when viewing a similar performance (above) of the same piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this year. More to view and hear on her MySpace page too.
