Composer Conversation with Donghoon Shin
Join us for an intimate conversation with composer Donghoon Shin ahead of the U.S. Premiere of his CMNW co-commissioned work Sonnets to Orpheus, performed on July 9 & 11 with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. Hear Shin discuss how his Korean heritage and London homelife shape his distinctive musical voice.
Artists
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Donghoon Shin
Composer
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Born in South Korea in 1983, Donghoon Shin studied composition at Seoul National University with Sukhi Kang and Uzong Choe. He moved to London in 2014, studying with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and with Sir George Benjamin at King’s College London.
In 2010, Donghoon Shin won the Gran Prix of the ANM-BBVA International Composition Concours, followed by the Goethe Award in 2013 from the Goethe Institut and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Major awards over the past decade include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2016, a UK Critics’ Circle Music Award for Young Talent in 2019, and the Claudio Abbado Prize in 2022. In 2017-18 he served as Young Composer in Residence with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group through Sound and Music’s Embedded Scheme and in 2019 was selected as a composer laureate for three years by Ricordilab.
Donghoon Shin’s music has been performed and commissioned by prominent orchestras, ensembles and festivals such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Spanish National Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Recherche, Festival d’Automne à Paris, and Tongyeong International Music Festival.
Recent works include Threadsuns (2024), concerto for viola and orchestra, premiered by Amihai Grosz and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Tugan Sokhiev, with further performances in Seoul, Minnesota, Vienna, and Tokyo. Nachtergebung (2022), concerto for cello and orchestra, inspired by the Austrian Expressionist poet Georg Trakl’s poems, was first performed by Bruno Delepelaire and the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko, has travelled to Edinburgh and was toured in Korea by the BBC Scottish Symphony in 2024. A new Piano Concerto for Seong-Jin Cho and the London Symphony Orchestra by Maxime Pascal was premiered in November 2025 in London.
Donghoon’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
- Composer Conversation with Donghoon Shin (currently selected)
- FREE Open Rehearsal: Donghoon Shin “Sonnets to Orpheus”
