Unsuk Chin

The Korean composer Unsuk Chin was born in 1961 in Seoul and now lives in Berlin. She studied composition with Sukhi Kang in her native city and with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. She won first prize at the Gaudeamus Competition in Amsterdam in 1985, thus launching her international career. Since then, her works have been performed by such conductors as Alan Gilbert, Fabio Luisi, Klaus Mäkelä, Kent Nagano, François-Xavier Roth, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Simone Young and by numerous leading international orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, as well as such eminent new music formations as the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, the Kronos Quartet, and the Arditti Quartet. She has additionally received commissions from such institutions as IRCAM in Paris and WDR to create electronic compositions. Unsuk Chin was composer-in-residence at Lucerne Festival in 2014, where her work Le Silence des Sirènes received its world premiere as part of the “Roche Commissions” series. The Festival Présences of Radio France, the Festival d’Automne, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, BBC’s Total Immersion Festival, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Konzerthuset Stockholm, and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo have also offered programs focused on her work. Unsuk Chin has directed several festivals since 2006, including the “Ars Nova” series at the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, which she founded and led for 11 years, and the Philharmonia Orchestra’s “Music of Today” concerts; in 2022, she began directing the Tongyeong International Festival in South Korea and the Weiwuying International Music Festival in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which she also founded. Unsuk Chin has received such distinctions as the Grawemeyer Award, the Arnold Schoenberg Prize, the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco Composition Prize, the Wihuri Sibelius Prize, the Bach Prize of the City of Hamburg, the Kravis Prize, and the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

In the summers of 2023 and 2024, Unsuk Chin is filling in for Wolfgang Rihm and will be joined by Dieter Ammann to direct the Lucerne Festival Academy’s Composer Seminar.

June 2023