Yumi Hara studied the piano from 3 years old but stopped at the age of 12 when she felt the classical material she was practising was boring compared to British rock she found then. She subsequently studied North Indian music and dance, and went on to study medicine and became psychiatrist, but at the age of 33, she decided to go back to music and settled in London. She studied West African percussion, Korean percussion, North Indian vocal music, Javanese Gamelan at SOAS as occasional student, then continued to study 20th Century piano music, ethnomusicology, instrumental and electroacoustic composition and recording at City University and gained BMus and PhD. She performed as a member of Frank Chickens, run a concert series Bonobo’s Ark, did some drum’n’bass production and DJ, and her compositions have been performed by contemporary classical ensembles such as PianoCircus and the BBC Singers, but she has become increasingly well-known as an improvisor and performer in the avant-rock, Canterbury and RIO scene since she performed with David Cross (ex-violinist of King Crimson), and released a CD album DUNE with Hugh Hopper (ex-Soft Machine bassist) as HUMI in 2008. Since then, she has been collaborating with ex-Henry Cow musicians Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson, Geoff Leigh, John Greaves and Dagmar Krause, faUSt musicians Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi, ex-GONG Daevid Allen as The Artaud Beats, THE WATTS, Half the Sky/Lindsay Cooper Songbook, you me & us, and Jump for Joy! She has also performed and/or collaborated with Tatsuya Yoshida, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, David Jackson, Guy Evans, Asaf Sirkis, Charles Hayward, Fred Frith, Akira Sakata, Chloe Herington, Pierre Chevalier, Guy Harries, David Toop and Kiku Day, among others.