The Korean Cultural Society of Boston
한미예술협회

Oct. 17: Jean Ahn

Jean Ahn’s creative output includes works ranging from solo instruments to full orchestra, as well as choral, dance and electroacoustic music. Recent Awards include 2019 Isadora Duncan Award for her collaborative work “Saltdoll” and being the finalist for League of American Orchestras Competition.  Jean finished her B.A. and M.M. at Seoul National University and Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, where she currently teaches. She is also the director for Ensemble ARI, which has shaped her ensemble writing tremendously.

Oct. 24: Jihye Chang (recording)

Pianist Jihye Chang has featured a strong commitment to new music throughout her performing career. Recently, Chang premiered the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Robert L. Aldridge at the Brevard Music Festival. Chang is currently in the midst of a multi-year solo project entitled “Continuum 88,” an exploration of the solo piano literature in collaboration with living composers, which she presented in multiple venues across the states, South Korea, and Taiwan. SMs. Chang is on the piano faculty of the Brevard Music Center and is a lecturer at Florida State University, and she holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Seoul National University.

Oct. 31: Donald Reid Womack (recording)

Composer Donald Reid Womack’s voice blurs cultural and aesthetic boundaries. His rhythmically charged music inhabits a space between worlds, frequently drawing on musical traditions of East Asia and the West in ways that belong partly to both but fully to neither. Widely recognized as a leader in intercultural composition, he often integrates Asian and western instruments, and his output includes several concertos for Korean (click) and Japanese instruments, as well as many chamber works for Asian and western instruments. Professor of composition at the University of Hawaii since 1994, he also serves on the faculties of both the Center for Japanese Studies and Center for Korean Studies.

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Nov. 7: Yoon-Ji Lee (recording)

Yoon-Ji Lee is a Korean composer based in Boston and New York. Lee’s chamber and electronic music have been performed by ensembles including JACK Quartet, Argento Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and many others, and at conference such as the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, and New Music Miami ISCM Festival. L\Lee earned her PhD in composition at NYU and did her Masters at New England Conservatory. Lee is Currently Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music.

Nov. 14: Juri Seo. (recording)

Juri Seo is a composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She holds a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and also attended Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Seoul's Yonsei University. She is Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.