Ensemble Mik Nawooj (EMN)’s Hip-Hop Orchestra Experience is part concert, dance party, and club night featuring original music that samples from classical and hip-hop—all presented in an underground setting like the New York scene that birthed hip-hop. Their music uniquely challenges the MCs and classical musicians pushing the boundaries of both hip-hop and concert music, creating something completely new. The program includes seminal works of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, deconstructed and reimagined with funky rhythms and rapid-fire rhymes.

Led by composer/pianist, JooWan Kim, the Hip-Hop Orchestra ­Experience featuring EMN creates Metamusic by sampling principles of Hip-Hop and Classical. Executed with resident MCs, a lyric soprano, woodwinds, French horns, strings, piano, and drums, the music is rigorous, nuanced, accessible, and free from the dogmas of Western European concert music aesthetic. The result is seamless tête-à-tête with “textures swimming through the sound…like the world’s fastest ping-pong game” (Pitchfork) and is considered the “cutting edge of hip-hop” (Huffington Post). 

In today’s climate of fear and “fake news”, the story of the unjust World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans is a cautionary tale about this country’s democracy and the fragile balance of power within our government. While the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans has been acknowledged as a “mistake,” ALTERNATIVE FACTS challenges the historical narrative and promotes healthy dialogue about race, religion, and the importance of speaking out when our democracy falters.