Elise Kwon

Music Production & Sound Design for Visual Media / MA

Since graduating from ArtU in Fall 2019, Elise Kwon has made her career as a composer, arranger, and a music educator. She is currently an Artist in Residence at Ruth Asawa High School of the Arts, where she teaches the Theory of Film Scoring and Music Production using Ableton software. As a freelance musician, she plays the piano and arranges music for weddings and other events.

Kwon's demo reel contains various styles of music. She focused particularly on bringing cultural authenticity to her compositions on "Southeast Asia" and "Middle East". Recording her friends playing oud, dumbek, and riqq added a vivid color of the "Middle East Countries" in the second clip. Kwon also used gong and bamboo xylophone for "Southeast Asia". For the scene from the Tom Hanks film, each emotional state is expressed by different instruments as the character's emotions change from sorrow to curiosity, and then to loneliness. A mixture of experimental sound design and acoustic instruments was used to create a gradual tension in the scene from the Hitchcock film. Kwon's work largely speaks for itself, and she invites your feedback on the reel.

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