Artists

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Anna Viechtl is a classically trained harpist whose work extends into contemporary music, improvisation and performance. Alongside the precision and tonal detail of classical playing, she explores new sounds and ways of performing on the harp. She plays in orchestras and chamber ensembles, belongs to Zafraan Ensemble and Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, and teaches at Berlin's Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. Her recordings also include collaborations in pop and electronic music.

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Daniel Glatzel is a composer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist with German and Korean roots. Since 2006, he has been mostly working and writing for the "Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra," an 11- to 20-piece ensemble he founded in Berlin, where he also studied saxophone and composition. It connects a wide variety of cultures and styles with excellent soloists hailing from eight different national backgrounds. Glatzel has also collaborated with such diverse artists as Hermeto Pascoal, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Tony Allen, Anthony Braxton, and Cory Arcangel, as well as indigenous and traditional performers from Malawi and South Korea. He curates festivals and creates projects that bring together musicians from contrasting artistic perspectives, which have been hosted on four different continents.

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Eunmaru Yi is a drummer working in Korea's jazz and free-improvisation scene. His duo with pianist Youngwoo Lee, ORBIT, brings original compositions into dialogue with improvisation. Their album was recorded directly to cassette at Stellive.kr in Seoul and released by Mung Music in 2021. The label describes a shared interest in preserving lyricism within abstract playing. Yi's earlier performance name, Seungjun Yi, is also documented in the release notes.

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Eunyong Sim is a geomungo performer and creator who explores physical resonance and inner vibrations through her instrument. Alongside performing on stages around the world as a member of Jambinai, she has expanded the boundaries of music through collaborations across artistic disciplines. She has released the solo albums Afterglow (잔영, 殘影) and Anonymous Women (이름없는 여인들), and has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including K-pop group SEVENTEEN. Based in Seoul, she continues to explore and expand the geomungo’s sonic and sensory possibilities through festivals, free-improvisation performances, and concerts in Korea and abroad.

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Seoul pianist, composer and improviser Eunyoung Kim developed her musical practice from classical and church music, later embracing jazz and free improvisation. After studying in the United States, she returned to Korea in 2013 and performed at festivals across Asia. Her KEY Trio debut, Silent Child, presents her compositions, while Earworm explores solo piano improvisation. Jazz People named her its Rising Star Pianist in 2016, and her work has also been heard on BBC Radio 3's Freeness.

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Jiyun Song is a daegeum performer, improviser and composer who explores the instrument through experiment and collaboration. She studied Korean traditional music at Seoul National University, then improvisation and musical creation in France. Based in Seoul since 2021, she works across free improvisation, experimental performance and international festivals. Her projects include the concert series La trace, work with Liquid Sound, and MoIM, a platform bringing improvising musicians together for creative exchange.

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Jo Seon Ah is a Seoul-based performance and sound artist working with Korean traditional arts. Working primarily with the gayageum, she explores the relationship between the instrument, the moving body and sound, transforming gestures, resonance and found sounds into performance and spatial work. She considers the body an alternative space—a stage and theatre through which sound, movement and memory pass. Her international activities include the 2026 Art Omi: Music program in New York and a residency with Transcultures in Belgium.

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Junho Song performs as Hayane and is one half of R01 Parlour with pianist Youngwoo Lee. The duo's first album, Blurry but Beautiful, grew from a friendship of more than ten years and an exploratory process of making music together. Released in 2023, it credits both musicians with the compositions, production and instrumental performances, and Song with the artwork. The project brings their shared improvisation into a compact recorded form, built around a small number of sounds.

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Drummer Song Junyoung is a musician based in Seoul, South Korea. He has performed and released albums through solo free improvisation projects and collaborations with musicians including Okkyung Lee, Eunyoung Kim, Sunjae Lee, Jimin Lee, and Da-eum Jeong, appearing on various stages and jazz festivals in Korea and abroad. In 2017, he participated in the Jazz Korea Festival with the band Triogo, and in 2018, he was featured in EBS Space Gonggam’s “Today’s Korean Jazz.” In June 2024, he toured Europe with Eunyoung Kim and Okkyung Lee, performing at venues including Cafe OTO in London and KM28 in Berlin.

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Kalle Zeier is a guitarist active in Berlin's jazz, funk and pop scenes. Born in Sibiu, Romania, he began playing in bands while at school and went on to study jazz guitar at Berlin's Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, learning from Kurt Rosenwinkel, Frank Möbus, John Hollenbeck and Jiggs Whigham. He plays with Onom Agemo & The Disco Jumpers, works in improvised settings, and teaches guitar privately and in music schools.

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Kihwa is a harpist whose work moves between improvisation and a wide range of artistic genres, rooted in her classical harp background. Rather than staying within fixed forms, she enjoys improvisation as a way of listening closely to sounds as they emerge and creating music freely in the moment. She has collaborated with artists in dance, theatre, visual art, and other fields, continually exploring new possibilities for the harp.

She is currently the artistic director of Banjul, a multidisciplinary cultural space in Jongno, Seoul, where she curates performances and exhibitions and develops a variety of arts and cultural programs.

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Marius Wankel is a drummer and improviser based in Berlin. Driven by a deep curiosity for sound and a strong focus on musical dialogue, he is constantly seeking new forms of expression. His musical language draws from both improvisation and composition, navigating freely through jazz, experimental and contemporary soundscapes. He is playing in numerous national and international projects such as Fare or Dream Big Fish and in 2025 he was awarded the German Jazz Prize as a member of the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra. Furthermore, he co-organizes the concert series Future Bash, which received the APPLAUS Award in 2025.

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Matthias Pichler is a double bassist, composer and improviser based in Berlin. He studied classical bass in Innsbruck and jazz in Linz, and spent eight years performing with the Wolfgang Muthspiel Trio. His work has taken him to more than thirty countries. A recipient of the Hans Koller awards in 2004 and 2006, he lived in New York from 2017 to 2020 before returning to Berlin. He also teaches in Innsbruck.

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Seajun Kwon is a bassist and composer born and raised in Seoul. A graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, he explores connections between jazz, avant-garde music and contemporary composition. His influences include Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill alongside György Ligeti, Tristan Murail and Morton Feldman. Since 2019 he has led the Walking Cliché Sextet, whose first album, Suite Chase Reflex, was released in 2021.

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Sonja Horlacher is a flutist working across early music, contemporary repertoire and improvisation. After studying in Lübeck, she specialised in contemporary performance in Basel and received a scholarship to the International Ensemble Modern Academy in 2012. Her collaborations include composers Peter Ablinger, Georg Friedrich Haas and Brian Ferneyhough, and performances with Ensemble Modern, ICTUS and her duo unassisted fold. She has appeared at festivals including Lucerne, Donaueschingen and the Ruhrtriennale.

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Based in Seoul, saxophonist, composer and improviser Sunjae Lee brings together jazz composition, open improvisation and extended instrumental techniques. His work developed through years in Boston and Portland, Oregon, followed by collaborations in Korea. Early solo releases include Meditations and Equilibrium; later projects include Entropy with Peter Evans, the solo recording Channel, and the duo Claustrophobia with drummer Junyoung Song. Lee also founded Mung Music, a label documenting original and improvised music from Seoul.

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Drummer and composer Sun-Mi Hong has developed a distinctive musical world, working primarily in Europe and gaining international attention for her delicate yet powerful drumming and original compositions. She has released five albums under her own name and maintains an ongoing collaboration with Edition Records, a label representing contemporary European jazz and creative improvised music.

In 2025, she received the Paul Acket Award at the internationally renowned North Sea Jazz Festival. In 2024, she won Best National Album at the Edison Jazz Awards, the Netherlands’ most prestigious music awards. She was also nominated in the International Drummer category of the 2023 German Jazz Prize and has received a nomination in the jazz category of the Korean Music Awards. She continues to work actively across Europe and Korea.

“A drummer keenly attuned to the beauty of musical structure.” — 여인경 (MM Jazz)

“A highly original composer.” — DownBeat

“Mysterious and deeply absorbing music.” — Jazzwise

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Flutist and saxophonist Taekjoon Kim studied composition and contemporary improvisation at Boston College and the New England Conservatory before returning to Seoul in 2015. His work includes the solo album Echo Chamber and the wind trio Turbulator with Massimo Magee and Dasom Baek, both released by Mung Music. Alongside performing in Seoul's jazz and improvised-music communities, he organizes MoIM, the Meeting of Improvising Musicians, with daegeum player Jiyun Song to encourage exchange among performers.

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Taiko Saito is a marimba and vibraphone player whose work spans jazz, classical music and improvisation. Born in Sapporo and based in Berlin since 1998, she studied with Keiko Abe in Japan and David Friedman in Berlin. Her projects include KOKO, the Berlin Mallet Group and the trio with Jan Roder and Michael Griener. She is a member of Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and received the German Jazz Award for percussion in 2024 and the Jazz Award Berlin in 2023.

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Vincent Bababoutilabo is a Berlin-based musician and author. His musical work includes Rosa Shakur, the band behind the album of the same name, and performances with Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra. He also works across sound, performance and writing. His audio walk zurückERZÄHLT received first prize at the 2022 Audio Walk Award. Projects presented on his own website include Shevek Iyapo – Congo Suite and the performance Eigensinnige Leben, alongside articles and educational work.

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Wonmi Jung is a South Korean vocalist, composer and improviser whose music draws on vulnerability and a wide range of artistic influences. Alongside making and teaching music, she paints and keeps journals. Her album Unspoken Words, released in 2022, brings those practices together through original songs, lyrics and artwork. In her own introduction she describes the record as a diary, leaving room for listeners to discover their own stories within the music.

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Yeonjoon Yoon is a composer, pianist and producer whose work connects classical performance with improvisation and contemporary artistic practice. His Études: Triptych places his own piano music in dialogue with Chopin and Philip Glass. Other work includes the composition Um: Sprouting and a response to Conrad Shawcross's installation Umbilical, combining composed and improvised sound. He also collaborates across Korean traditional music, visual art and performance, and has worked as an arranger and performer for television and film.

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Born in Seoul, pianist and composer Youngwoo Lee began with piano and guitar, playing pop, funk and gospel before concentrating on jazz and improvised music. He studied at Howon University and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, graduating cum laude. His work with the Sunmi Hong Quintet included first prize at the 2018 Dutch Jazz Competition. His own biography describes a practice between Amsterdam and Seoul, with performances at North Sea Jazz and Bimhuis and a quartet of his own.