Composer and jazz drummer Bomi Choi releases new Latin-inspired song ‘RIO’

Jazz drummer Bomi Choi has participated in international music festivals such as the Lima International Jazz Festival in Peru (2007), Siena Jazz Festival in Italy (2008), Shanghai×Hangzhou JZ Jazz Festival in China (2013), Zara Island Jazz Festival in Korea (2013), Chilpo Jazz Festival (2014-2016), and Taehwa River Jazz Festival in Ulsan (2017). She has performed at various jazz clubs in Korea and abroad, including Blue Note and Smalls in New York City, and organized the Bomi Choi Quartet, releasing the albums 'Lunar Ship' (2012), 'Bomi's Homies' (2014), 'Jumpin' With B' (2018), and the single 'Slow Tree' (2023). He currently teaches at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University, and is a drum artist for Canopus.
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 Dive Music announced that drummer and composer BOMI CHOI will release his new Latin-inspired song “RIO” on July 17 (Monday) through various music sites. It’s been four months since he released his last single, “Slow Tree”.

The new song, “RIO,” is a song that captures the emotions and images that Choi felt when he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2019 to perform at the global music festival Rock in Rio. Although the song was written in 2019, it took almost three years to record it due to personal reasons such as the pandemic, marriage, childbirth, and parenting.

Until now, the song was only available live at Choi Bomi’s performances, but this year, it was selected for the Content Music Production & Distribution Support Project organized by the Korea Association of Recording Artists and the Recording Industry Association of Korea and released as a full-length album.

Moving away from the authentic New York-style jazz of his previous two full-length albums, Choi Bomi is showing his capabilities as a popular pop-jazz composer through his recently released singles, amplifying the expectations of the public.

The song features Korean jazz musicians who have collaborated with Choi in many performances, including Lee Ji-min on vocals, Park Jong-hyun on keyboards, Hyun Yong-sun on guitar, and Choi Sung-hwan on contrabass.

Drummer Bomi Choi is not only a jazz performer, but also a composer and arranger for various genres of music projects.

She is currently working on simple acoustic pop songs about everyday life with a team called Mellowmint, and rock and jazz fusion gugak style songs with a composition of gayageum, electric guitar, and drums with a band called BIODA.

“I feel like I’m still in my most comfortable clothes as a performer,” says Choi. However, I think the biggest attraction of being a composer is that I can pursue my musical imagination with parts I hadn’t thought of or musical ideas that weren’t fully utilized as much as I had intended after the performance,” he said.

Her self-written songs reflect her outlook on life. Just as countless choices come together to create a person’s present, the emotions she feels from moment to moment come together and suddenly burst out as a melody she is humming. The words she desperately wants to say become the story of her life and are expressed in music.

Choi will continue to release music and fulfill a busy performance schedule this year.

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