Woman Crush Wednesday! 8/25

It’s time for another edition of #WomanCrushWednesday! This week, we are showcasing Ms. Unsuk Chin! She is a multi-award winning composer whose compositions have been performed by orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others. In 2019, The Guardian ranked her Cello Concerto (2009) the 11th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Andrew Clements describing it as “perhaps the most original and entertainingly disconcerting of all of [her concertos], cast in four brilliant movements that never quite conform to type”. Ms. Chin’s music has also been featured at the 2014 Lucerne Festival, the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, the Suntory Summer Festival, the 2013 Stockholm Concert Hall’s Tonsätterfestival and at Settembre Musica in Italy, and in 2001/2002, she was appointed composer-in-residence at Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Ms. Chin actually began teaching herself the piano from a young age. She then went on to study composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University and won several international prizes in her early 20s, including awards for her graduation piece for three celli, named Spektra. Following her undergraduate graduation, Ms. Chin received an academic grant to move and study in Germany. While there she studied with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1985 to 1988.

Once in Germany, Ms. Chin began writing electronic pieces while working as a freelance composer at the electronic music studio of the Technical University of Berlin. She composed her breakthrough work, Acrostic Wordplay, in 1991 where it was premiered by the Nieuw Ensemble. Since then, it has been performed in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia and North America. This was only the beginning of Ms. Chin’s illustrious career, as she was awarded the 2004 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her Violin Concerto. In 2007, she added to her long list of achievements by receiving the Kyung-Ahm Prize, the Music Composition Prize of the Prince Pierre Foundation, Ho-Am Prize in the Arts, Wihuri Sibelius Prize, and the Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, just to name a few. In addition, her works have been conducted by esteemed maestros such as Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel, Myung-Whun Chung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Peter Eötvös, David Robertson and George Benjamin.

Recently, Ms. Chin was appointed Artistic Director of the Tongyeong International Music Festival from 2022 onwards. To learn more about Ms. Unsuk Chin, be sure to check out her official profile at famed music publishing company, Boosey and Hawkes. You can also check out the video below to watch pianist Mei Yi Foo perform Ms. Chin’s Piano Study V “Toccata”. As always, you can visit our forums  to see some of our previous #womancrushwednesdays, and let us know who you would like to see in the upcoming weeks!