Guest artist Hie-Yon Choi, Professor at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, will present a master class for University of Michigan piano students. Free and open to the public.

One of the most sought-after pianists of her generation, South Korean pianist HIEYON CHOI first appeared on the international piano music scene when she won prizes at high-profile competitions such as Kapell, Epinal, Busoni and Viotti. HieYon Choi has been since performing with prestigious orchestras of Europe, US and Korea such as das Rundfunkorchester Berlin, the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington DC), the Northern Sinfonia, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and the Korean Broadcast Symphony Orchestra and appears as a soloist in festivals and concert series.

A milestone of Choi’s performing career was the four-year long cycle of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas at the Kumho Art Hall in Seoul. For this series she received the Arts Award of the year 2005 by the Korean Arts & Cultural Association. Later she completed another Beethoven cycle with all piano trios, violin sonatas and works for cello and piano. Her second cycle of all Beethoven piano sonatas took place in various venues in Korea, Germany and the US until 2018. Choi‘s other series of performances include ones that explored Brahms and his associates and that of French school. She has been collaborating with renowned musicians such as Truls Mørk, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Peter Stumph, Mark Kosower, Romain Guyot, Stephan Dohr, Ulf Wallin, Mikyung Lee, Soovin Kim.

Alongside the canon of the classical piano literature such as Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Debussy, Music of 20th & 21st century forms another important part of Choi’s career. A strong advocate of the new music, she was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence of Tong-Yeong International Music festival. She performed works of Olivier Messiaen, György Kurtag, Sofia Gubaidulina, York Höller, Unsuk Chin, Suhki Kang a. o. with the Seoul Philharmonic.

Recently Choi completed her long journey of recording entire Beethoven piano sonatas. Her first two Beethoven albums were released in 2018 and in 2021 retrospectively by Decca Korea and UMG and they were highly noted by German and Korean magazine/papers. The entire set of Beethoven piano sonatas are to be released in the upcoming year. Her other recordings include Debussy Douze Etudes, F. Liszt Six Grand Etudes on Paganini, Isang Yun 5 Stücke, Chopin Etudes Op. 10 & Op. 25. Choi appeared and performed in TV & radio channels in Korea, US, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and in Germany.

In 2023/24 HieYon Choi joined the piano faculty at Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, after having served for 24 years as tenured piano professor at Seoul National University in Korea. Choi has been giving numerous master classes worldwide; the Guildhall School in London, Ecole Normale in Paris, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Hochschule Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf in Germany, Music School of Manhattan, Cincinnati, Michigan in the US, Performing Arts Hong-Kong, China and in summer festivals in Italy, France, Korea and in the US. Choi also serves as a jury member at international competitions such as Beethoven, Maj Lind, Pozzoli, Epinal and Orléans.

Born in Inchon, South Korea, Choi gave her debut concert at the age of 6 with the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra. She won all four most coveted competitions in Korea (Dong-A, Choong-Ang, Korea Times, Ehwa-KyungHyang) under the early tutelage of Prof. Joong-Won Koh and moved to Germany at the age of 18 to study with Prof. Klaus Hellwig at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. The late Prof. Hans Leygraf at the same institute and the late Prof. György Sebök at Indiana University were further source of inspiration to her.