Home
About
Profile
Current Projects
Services
Multimedia
Links
Contact
Disclaimer

Ora Uzel MM Composition       DePaul University (Chicago, IL) BA Music (composition, piano and percussion)       Central College (Pella, IA)

Ora is a composer, performer, artist, and DJ in Chicago. She has two degrees in music composition, has nearly two decades of music experience, and is now branching out into other art forms. Ora is currently developing her skills as a performance artist. Her present ambition is to gain the software and hardware necessary to get back into music as a professional DJ and through music production; primarily in the genres of goa, psytrance, psyambient, IDM, neurotrance, tribal, and global dance. She is also developing her skills as a fire performer and poi artist, a deep spiritual love kindled in the past year.

On the side, Ora is also developing her skills as a web designer, graphic artist, and intuitive reader. She is planning a large art project for Burning Man 2008. Ora is the regular decorator at the popular Chicago event, Circus of the Spirit, featured in both TimeOut Chicago (August 2006) and the Chicago Sun Times (January 2007). In her spare time, Ora journals online prolifically, does yoga, attends various area consciousness events, and participates in the continued growth of Chicago's consciousness revolution (which largely makes itself apparent through the green revolution).

Ora was born in Miami, Florida, but her family moved to Iowa just weeks later. She was raised in several Iowa cities, moving roughly once every 5 years. Proud of her heritage, she is two-quarters 4th-6th generation Frisian (Dutch) American and two-quarters 4th-6th generation Bohemian (Czech) American. Her brothers raised her as a gamer, playing D&D at age 3, and mastering Tetris at age 8. In an uneventful childhood, Ora achieved Eagle Scout rank, was a Presbyterian pastor's kid, and was heavily involved in technical theatre for a time. Her primary initial source of creative inspiration came when she first encountered Figment on Disney Epcot's ride, "Journey Into Imagination" (© Disney), where Figment encouraged audiences to engage their dreams and create them into reality.

Ora has 14 years of experience in piano, 12 years of experience in percussion (specializing in keyboard percussion), 3 summers of drum corps experience, and 6 years of music composition experience. Music has allowed Ora to travel through over 30 states in the United States, and a dozen countries. In the autumn of 2001, Ora lived in London for a semester. She has a BA Music (magna cum laude with honors) from Central College in Pella, IA and a MM Composition (with distinction) from the DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Ora was marginally successful with complex intellectual classical music, but as she finished her Masters degree, she found the field generally overpretentious and too predominantly theory-based. In short, the music had no soul, no intention, and little consciousness undertones.

Seeking out spiritual awakening and music that is equally intellectually engaging as it is physically and spiritually engaging, Ora found electronic dance music (EDM, a term never mentioned by her professors) and the diverse creative cultures and communities that are involved with this vast musical umbrella term (sometimes also referred to as "electronica"). Ora's current musical aspirations are to explore and create art and music in various EDM-related communities and cultures.

Ora's musical philosophical goal is to create a music that encompasses a combination of (but is not limited to):

• 1) the ecstatic sensory stimulation of various kinds of electronic dance music (physical),
• 2) the codified narrative language of film music (narrative), and
• 3) the complex formal structures of contemporary chamber and orchestral music (theoretical).

Ora's influences and inspirations include a very unusual combination of people, bands, and sounds from varied genres and time periods. This list is always growing and changing. But if you really must know, Danny Elfman was Ora's childhood hero and Bjork is just a childish hero. Then add in dashes of Dead Can Dance, Infected Mushroom, Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, Stravinsky, various dark psytrance, Messiaen, Enya, various psyambient music, and random other sources.

Ora is also a performance artist, currently specializing in fire and poi performance, web weaving, performance art, creativity consultation, event decoration (see Circus of the Spirit), graphic design, web design, and origami. Ora also dabbles in pencil mosaics/mandalas, writing, poetry, ribbon dancing, sword dancing, juggling, and various visual arts.