Youn Sun Nah

(KOREA)
contemporary jazz with classical, pop & blues influence

An opera singer’s and choir conductor’s Korean daughter, she is no ordinary jazz singer, but more like a jazz version of Björk, whose boundless imagination taps freely anything from opera

to blues to pop. Her mysterious voice can be simultaneously delicately ethereal and haltingly powerful. It nails different emotional states down with awesome ease.

Youn Sun Nah was only 23 and with no musical schooling, when The Korean Symphony orchestra asked her to sing with them. She performed for a while in Korean musicals winning a heap of prizes doing it. But

classical music didn’t ultimately tickle her. In 1995 she moved to Paris to study jazz and French chansons. Soon she played local jazz clubs with her band YSN 5tet causing quite a stir in the French

music circles.

In Korea she has long been a big star, but live performances around the world, not the least at the Jazz At Lincoln Center in US, have put her career on globally upward spin. While the older album was

produced by pianist Niels Lan Doky, she made the new Voyage with Swedish Ulf Wakenius and Lars Danielsson.