ABOUT
Korean-born, Jinseok Choi is in demand as a contemporary classical composer and has achieved great acclaim to date with many prolific commissions and performances. He won the prestigious 4th Basel Composition Competition (third place winner) chaired by Michael Jarell in 2023, and Korea’s top composition prize, the 41st Korean National Composition Award in 2022. Other major awards include the 15th Woohyun Award (2021, South Korea), the Reinl Composition Award (2020, Austria), the first prize at the 16th Kazimierz Serocki International Composer’s Competition (2019, Poland), and the first prize at the 39th Joongang Music Competition (2013, South Korea).
Recent highlights include the Polish premiere of Pathos for piano quintet in Warsaw, performed by the Hashtag Ensemble (2019), which was recorded and broadcast on the Polish Radio Channel and then offered to the European Radio Union for broadcast. In 2020, the Gyeonnggi Philharmonic Orchestra premiered his Reverberation after Movement for solo oboe and chamber orchestra in Seoul, South Korea, and in 2021, the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra premiered his Sunrise in Hyangil Am for orchestra in Szczecin, Poland. In 2022, Choi had his first individual composition recital supported by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.
The 2023/24 season saw performances of his recent orchestral works, Note-Play for solo viola and orchestra and Chameleon for large orchestra, premiered by the Korean national Symphony Orchestra in Seoul, South Korea and the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland. His busy season continues in 2024 with him holding his second individual composition recital supported by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture and writing a new work for ensemble commissioned by Euskal Herriko Txistulari Elkartea (Spain).
Choi’s composition projects between 2019 and the present have been generously supported by the Arts Council Korea, the Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture, the Korean Cultural Centre, and the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.
Jinseok Choi completed his PhD degree in composition at the University of Manchester in 2022, supervised by Prof. Philip Grange.