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Travis Yoon

Travis Yoon was a Korean American violinist and composer from Evanston, Illinois, who attended the Juilliard School. He was Ezra Cruz’s roommate during the 2024–2025 academic year and became his romantic partner. Travis was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in December 2024 and died at age twenty after a relapse in August 2025.

Early Life and Family

Travis was born in 2004 and grew up in Evanston with his parents, Sung-ho and Eun-joo, and his younger sister, Hana. The family used English and Korean.

Hana regularly sent Travis photographs of sea creatures while he was at Juilliard and during his illness. He saved the photographs on his phone. His paternal grandmother, Soon-ja Yoon, remained involved with the family during his treatment.

Juilliard and Music

Travis entered Juilliard in 2023 as a violinist and composer. Rowan Collins, then a third-year violin-performance student, became his mentor and close friend during his first semester. She stayed late to work with him, rearranged her practice schedule, and discussed bowings and tempos with him in the residence hall. His compositions included chamber music and work based on Korean folk melodies associated with Gyeonggi Province that Soon-ja had hummed.

During chemotherapy, fatigue and treatment effects made it difficult for Travis to write the music he could hear. In January 2025, Ezra began entering notation while Travis described and hummed the parts. The collaboration allowed Travis to continue composing during treatment.

Main article: Travis Yoon - Composition Breakdown and Scribe Sessions Begin (Mid-January 2025) - Event

In December 2024, Travis was absent from the residence hall for four days. Rowan waited for news and, after four days without knowing whether he was alive, asked Ezra for that answer directly.

Main article: Travis Yoon’s Four-Day Absence (December 2024) - Event

Juilliard Friends and Housing

Travis’s theory study group included Brooke Kim, Dylan Abrams, Sarah Chen, Gavin Worth, and Aditi Sharma. The five friends rented the two duplexes at The 146th Street House, where Travis joined them for meals, study sessions, and ordinary visits. Dylan and Gavin kept the third bedroom in their duplex available and repeatedly encouraged him to take it.

The invitation was sincere, but Travis did not trust it as evidence that his friends wanted him there. He privately believed that most people tolerated him rather than actively liked him and interpreted repeated welcome as politeness. Juilliard tuition and New York City’s cost of living made remaining in campus housing financially defensible, but his private reason was the risk of accepting the room and discovering that tolerance was all they had meant.

Brooke was the soft-spoken member of the group. When the friends learned that Ezra had been calling Travis “Trevor,” Brooke honored Travis’s request to end the confrontation by saying, “Okay, Trav. We’re dropping it.”

Before Travis left campus, students throughout their cohort expected him and Brooke to eventually become a couple. Brooke had not consciously understood their closeness as romantic; she had assumed that Travis would remain part of her future. Nobody told her about the cohort’s expectation while he was alive. Another student disclosed it casually after his death, believing Brooke already knew, when she could no longer examine the possibility with him.

Leukemia Diagnosis and Treatment

Main article: Travis Yoon (Battle with ALL)

Travis was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in late December 2024. He completed approximately six weeks of induction chemotherapy in New York before transferring to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for consolidation treatment closer to his family in Evanston.

Travis initially responded to treatment. The leukemia later relapsed and became refractory. He died in Evanston with his family and Ezra in August 2025.

Main article: Funeral and Memorials for Travis Yoon (2025)

Ezra paid for Brooke, Aditi, Dylan, Sarah, Gavin, Rowan, and Tyler to travel from New York to Evanston for Travis’s funeral. A later memorial was held in New York City, where Ezra asked Travis’s friends to participate.

Relationship with Ezra Cruz

Main article: Ezra Cruz and Travis Yoon

Travis and Ezra shared a room at Meredith Willson Residence Hall during Ezra’s first year at Juilliard. They became romantic partners and did not hide their relationship. The romance lasted several months. Ezra remained involved through Travis’s initial hospitalization and treatment, visited Evanston during the spring, and stayed with Travis and the Yoon family throughout summer 2025. He was present when Travis died.

The Yoon family maintained its relationship with Ezra after Travis’s death.

Friendship with Rowan Collins

Main article: Rowan Collins and Travis Yoon

Rowan mentored Travis from his first semester at Juilliard and became one of his close friends and musical collaborators. Their work together included arrangement development and ensemble practice. After his death, she was among the musicians who recorded his arrangements as a posthumous gift to his family.

Music and Posthumous Release

Travis completed ‘’이어받은 선율’‘, a collection based on Korean folk melodies supplied by Soon-ja, during treatment. Travis remained the composer and arranger; Ezra served as his notation scribe during treatment and later coordinated the album’s release through the Fifth Bar Collective. Rowan was among the musicians who recorded the arrangements.

A three-measure cello passage from one of Travis’s compositions was incorporated into Ezra’s wrist tattoo while Travis was alive. Travis understood the notation as a promise rather than a memorial. After his death, a handwritten score page from ‘’이어받은 선율’’ supplied both his capital ‘’T’’ and the notation for a separate memorial tattoo.

Memorable Quotes

“I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

(Source: Travis Yoon (Battle with ALL); Travis responding after Ezra confronted him about minimizing his symptoms.)

“Don’t let me disappear.”

(Source: Travis Yoon - Composition Breakdown and Scribe Sessions Begin (Mid-January 2025) - Event; Travis during the composing crisis in January 2025.)

“You called me Trevor for nine weeks.”

(Source: Travis Yoon - Composition Breakdown and Scribe Sessions Begin (Mid-January 2025) - Event; Travis explaining his fear that people would forget him.)

“I can hear all four voices. I can hear the whole thing. I just can’t get it out.”

(Source: Travis Yoon - Composition Breakdown and Scribe Sessions Begin (Mid-January 2025) - Event; Travis describing the music he could no longer enter himself during treatment.)

“I’m fine.”

(Source: Travis Yoon (Battle with ALL); Travis’s recurring response while minimizing his worsening symptoms.)

“Can we just drop it?”

(Source: Ezra Cruz and Travis Yoon; Travis after his friends heard Ezra call him Trevor and confronted him about allowing the wrong name to continue.)

Characters Supporting Characters Deceased Characters Musicians Composers Korean American Characters Disabled Characters Chronic Illness Characters LGBTQ+ Characters Yoon Family