From gossamer harmonic textures to lush orchestral washes, MIZU builds expansive soundscapes through her singular cello playing. Her signature stratiform style of composition, melding self-recorded layers of her instrument with electronic manipulation and experimental production, explores themes of transformation and the infinite possibilities within queerness. Taking on new life onstage, MIZU’s work interrogates and challenges the boundaries between concert, theater, and performance art through electrifying and cathartic stagings.
Forest Scenes, MIZU’s latest full-length, is an acknowledgment of the mystery of transcendent experiences and the thrills of self-discovery. The record charts multitudinous connections, inspired in equal parts by the vast urbanity of São Paulo, where MIZU composed the record, the queer spaces and dancefloors of New York City, and in the more abstract place of a self in transition. Forest Scenes deftly interweaves the organic and the synthetic, its wide range of sonic densities a reflection of its diverse origins.
MIZU’S debut album Distant Intervals, released in Spring 2023, distills her musical memories as a classically-trained performer and weaves classical motifs with experimental sound design and open-ended arrangements. The album received critical praise and attention from platforms such as Bandcamp Daily, New Sounds, Stereogum, I Care If You Listen, Foxy Digitalis, and Them, and landed in the Top 10 of the Billboard Classical Crossover charts.
A fervent collaborator, MIZU has worked across genre and medium with movement artists such as Lili (Luyan Li), Kennie Zhou, and Antonius-Tín Bui, directors George Miller and Dan Silver, and designer MEGHUN. She has performed extensively with guitarist and electronic producer Rachika Nayar, collaborated with techno producer and flutist Concrete Husband, and was featured on the recent album Spike Field by singer-songwriter Maria BC.
MIZU’s performance highlights include hometown shows in New York - opening for Tim Hecker at Pioneer Works, opening for Baths/Geotic at Public Records, and a performance at The Noguchi Museum. Her concert appearances have taken her to Tokyo, Japan and on a cross-country tour to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Washington DC. Upcoming engagements include a performance at Rewire 2024 in The Hague, Netherlands.
Robert Ouyang Rusli (they/them) is a film composer & artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They recently scored A24's upcoming film Problemista written and directed by Julio Torres. They composed the music for the film Bruiser on Hulu and the Gotham Award and Independent Spirit nominated film Test Pattern, as well as many other films including the short films Bambirak and Rest Stop which won Jury Awards for International Fiction and US Fiction at Sundance. They are the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship for Music Composition, ASCAP Jimmy Van Heusen Award, Pioneer Works Music Residency, and BAFTA USA Breakthrough Fellowship.
Under their solo moniker OHYUNG, they produce genre-shifting music that moves between ambient, experimental pop, and distorted noise. Their most recent record imagine naked! is a collection of ambient soundscapes out now on NNA tapes and was described by The Quietus as a “masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions” and was hailed by NPR as one of the best 50 albums of 2022.
They have performed for SXSW, Boiler Room, and many clubs and spaces in NYC such as Roulette, Elsewhere, Nowadays, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY Live Arts x BAM Pride, Trans Pecos, and WNYC's The Greene Room.