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).
After a successful performance of a novelty piece which featured an MC and chamber ensemble, Kim had a profound shift in the direction of his writing. He felt that he found a way out of the stifling contemporary concert music aesthetic in this new way of composition. JooWan crystallized his ideas into Method Sampling, a principle of borrowing or sampling of rationales from related as well as unrelated fields, then reframing them into one's own system.
In 2010, JooWan Kim recruited his best friend from college, Christopher Nicholas to push the project forward in a serious way. Since then, EMN attracted some of the most excellent classical musicians and MCs in the SF Bay Area while gaining national attention from outlets such as BBC, ESPN, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, NPR, Pitchfork, NowThis, and more.
THE TEAM
JooWan Kim - Artistic Director
At the age of 20, Korean born composer JooWan Kim moved to the U.S. and began his formal study in composition. During this time, Kim also trained in Zen meditation and Sundo (仙道), a Korean Taoist internal alchemy under the tutelage of Venerable Hyunoong Sunim for seven years. JooWan still maintains his daily practice.
Christopher Nicholas - Executive Director
Christopher Nicholas received a dual B.M. in Songwriting and Vocal Performance from Berklee College of Music in 2004. He was awarded the prestigious Berklee Achievement Scholarship and received an honorable mention for his original song, “I Write these Words” in the Berklee Songwriting Contest. He was granted the Patsy C. & Fred W. Patterson College of Music Scholarship to the University of North Texas, completing an M.M. in Jazz Studies in 2009. In addition, Nicholas was a featured soloist on the album “In Case you Missed it” with the U.N.T. Jazz Singers directed by Paris Rutherford. In 2010, along with the artistic director, JooWan Kim, Christopher co-founded Ensemble Mik Nawooj. They ran the organization overseeing many successful campaigns in PR, fundraising, and tours. In 2016, Chris directed the second album campaign with the artistic director resulting in national recognition from Huffington Post, Pitchfork, ESPN, and NFL Super Bowl.
Unity Lewis - Resident MC
Unity Lewis began making music, performing, drawing, painting, and sculpting at the age of three. He started seriously recording music and founded his first rap group in Los Angeles when he was 13. In the Fall of 2000, Unity moved to the Bay Area where he completed his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the California College of the Arts. Since 2001, Unity has taught Hip-Hop and art in public schools across the Bay Area and on the island of Guam, where the local legislature awarded a resolution for his contribution to students’ lives in 2005. For over 20 years now, Unity has been creating, releasing, and performing his own music full time as well as curating art exhibits in addition to continue his growth as an art educator. Lewis has collaborated with artists such as Dead Prez, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Oscar Brown Jr., Umar Bin Hassan of The Last Poets, and more. As a visual artist and curator he has exhibited and featured in publications alongside Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Hank Willis Thomas, Betye Saar, Samella Lewis, and many others.
Kirby Dominant - Resident MC
Kirby Dominant is a Bay Area underground hip-hop giant who doesn’t need much introduction. He started releasing records since 1998 collaborating with such artists as Hieroglyphics, Living Legends, Murs, Roy Hargrove, Moka Only, Factor, and many more. Dominant is one of the primary reasons EMN started. He encouraged JooWan who was then a conservatory student to make an album together after a successful novelty performance in 2006. We here at Ensemble Mik Nawooj are grateful for his artistry, insights, friendship, and are excited to have him back as our resident MC. For more info on Kirby D., here’s his advice “Google me, b*tch!”
Lyman Jerome Alexander II - Drums
Lyman Jerome Alexander II started playing drums for EMN in 2012 and is the longest tenured musician of the group. His drumming roots goes back to gospel music where Alexander honed his craft playing for church services. Lyman continued his training at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. Alexander’s impeccable sense of ensemble playing matches well with the entirely orchestral instrumentation of EMN and helps generating the naturalness of the sound that is uncommon when juxtaposing classical instruments with the drum set. He is an avid gamer.
Yung Phil - Turf Dancer
Oakland native Phillip Mays, aka Yung Phil, is a pioneer of turf dancing, a form of street dancing with roots in Oakland, California. He has collaborated with many well-known hip-hop artists, including Lil Jon, E-40, G-Eazy, YG, DJ Snake, Tyga, Quavo, and more, performing alongside them on tour and in music videos. In 2019, Yung Phil was featured on NPR (KQED) in a piece highlighting Oakland’s hip-hop dance culture.
SANDMAN - MC Emeritus
Prior to releasing a solo album titled, The Art of Dreaming, Sandman was cultivated as an emcee during his involvement with the dynamic hip hop group “The Attik.” His association with the group began as a teen and eventually blossomed into something formal. In 2005 the group released the album Jungle Electric. Sandman has shared a stage with KRS-One, Dead Prez, E-40, San Quinn, Mr. FAB, Aceyalone, Zion I, Game Rebellion, Medusa and many more. A veteran to performing, he has rocked stages from the Bay Area to New York and Puerto Rico and shined at legendary venues, such as the Fillmore, in front of sold-out crowds. Sandman joined EMN in 2013 and has been featured on Wall Street Journal, NPR, SF Chronicle, OZY and more.