Youn Sun Nah

Born Na Yoon-sun in Seoul, South Korea on August 28, 1969, jazz singer Youn Sun Nah was equally inspired by French chansons, classic American divas, and her country's traditional sounds. Her dramatic, experimental style makes her stand out as a unique figure who crosses between jazz and world music. The daughter of a conductor and a musical theater actress, she was a protesting teenager on the streets of Seoul during the Gwangju Uprising in the 1980s and discovered French crooners like Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel when her schoolteacher played cassettes in class. She dabbled with musical theater and sang with the Korean Symphony Orchestra, before moving to Paris, France in 1995 to study at the historic CIM Jazz School. She formed her own quintet called YSN 5tet to perform across Europe. Her early albums - Reflet (2001) and Light for the People (2002) - featured elegant orchestral renditions of standards such as “Time After Time” and “Sometimes I'm Happy.” In 2008, she started working with acoustic guitarist Ulf Wakenius and developed a more stripped-down, intimate style. It led to her breakthrough album, Same Girl, in 2010 and saw her cover tracks by acts as diverse as Sergio Mendes, Randy Newman, and Metallica as she honed her own melodic form of scat singing. Follow-up Lento (2013) established her reputation across the world and was smooth, graceful, and slightly eccentric, as Nah took on Tom Waits' “Jockey Full of Bourbon” and the cowboy folk song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Four years later, Youn Sun Nah released the album She Moves On (2017), which rose to the Number 16 position on the South Korean Albums chart. The album also entered the charts in Austria, Belgium France, Germany, and Switzerland. Her 2019 album Immersion didn’t fare as well in the charts, although it did receive critical acclaim. In February 2022, she released the album Waking World, which featured the title track, one of her most haunting singles to date. Her 2024 album, Elles, contained her unique takes on popular tracks such as “My Funny Valentine,” “White Rabbit,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”