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Ora UzelMM Composition BA Music (composition, piano and percussion) |
Ora is a musician/composer and fire performer.
Ora's fields of interest include: music composition, improvisational performance (piano, percussion or others), fire dancing (poi, staff or swords), writing, consciousness, nature, traveling, etiology, etymology, genealogy/anthropology/archaeology, indigenous spiritual traditions and mythology, languages, astronomy, physics, cosmology, amateur philosophy, and archetypes (past lives, tarot, dream analysis, astrology).
Two people Ora admires most are Hiromi and Evelyn Glennie. Her creative influences include: her friends, nature, Phil Hine, Robert Anton Wilson, Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman, Final Fantasy games, Ayahuasca, Danny Elfman, John Cage, Alice in Wonderland, Bjork, J.R.R. Tolkein, Grant Morrison, Lady Gaga, Queen, Burning Man, Dungeons & Dragons, Frank Herbert, Michelle Belanger & Chris Miller, Star Trek, Gyorgy Ligeti, Igor Stravinsky, Erin Lindsey, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Liquid Bloom, Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Ghost in the Shell, Landmark Education, buddhism, discordianism, David Lynch or Terence McKenna, and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Ora's musical portfolio includes about twenty acoustic and electronic works, inluding a symphonic tone poem, all composed from 1999-2006. Throughout 2006-2008, Ora often performed fire dancing and performance art works through the Chicago and the surrounding areas. Ora was co-founder of the Sacred Spaces Camp and Pantheogenesis temple at Burning Man in 2008, and contributed to Entheon Village's Gaia Maitreya Goddess Temple in 2007. She is part of the Chicago Fire Tribe, a large group of professional and amateur fire performers in Chicago who lead the Full Moon Jams in the summers.
Ora's indigenous ancestors were Frisians and Bohemians. Her ancestors came to America in the middle to late nineteenth century. Ora is spiritually eclectic and could fit under a number of subjective labels including: animist, animatist, indigenous, Asatru, buddhist, agnostic, atheist, discordian, chaote, New Age, Jungian, and galactic. As a dedicated skeptic and devout spiritualist, Ora has no firm beliefs, but she has strong suspicions.
Ora grew up in Iowa, then spent half a decade in Chicago, and the most recent few years in southwestern Michigan. During her high school and college years, music trips brought her to several European countries as well as Canada and Mexico. In the autumn of 2001, she lived and studied in London for a semester. In 2003 Ora performed the piano concerto Rhapsody in Blue with the Central College Symphonic Wind Ensemble on tour in Canada.
Ora has a Bachelor of the Arts in Music (magna cum laude) specializing in composition, piano and percussion from Central College in Pella, Iowa, and a Master of Music in Composition (with distinction) from DePaul University School of Music in Chicago, Illinois. She also has an extensive knowledge of Transgender Studies. In late 2006 she completed Landmark Education's Forum and Advanced Course, and since late 2007 she has participated in ceremonies originating in a good way from native traditions.
Ora's dreams are to: improvise piano for creative audiences, play Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto in full with an orchestra, fire spin poi while doing a somersault through the legs, and improvise electronic dance music as a performance.
We are all related. Do good always.
Moderation in Moderation.
Breathe, Listen, and Just Dance.
Copyright Ora Uzel 2004-2010.
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