Seo Yoon Soyoona Kim 김서윤 writes music to spotlight and cherish underrepresented stories while exploring time, harmony, and texture in interdisciplinary settings. She employs voice, acoustic and electronic instruments and found sounds in her music to realize the soundscape she imagines.
Seo Yoon defines herself as a citizen composer. She believes that her music can make a positive impact on the world around her and is passionate about making it happen from various perspectives. To make new music accessible to a broader community, she co-founded the composers’ collective CNSNC in 2019. With her colleagues, she has collaborated with several science organizations and presented interdisciplinary projects. She gave a talk about her music at the Space Telescope Science Center and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and released these projects as a collective album on streaming platforms. This May, she will be giving a keynote speech at the 47th Cape May Bird Festival, where her new chamber piece teach me how to sing, music about bird conservation, will be premiered by the NYC-based collective BlackBox Ensemble along with new pieces by her CNSNC colleagues.
Seo Yoon keeps exploring ways to engage with the community and environment. She served as a composition instructor in the Junior Bach composition program to help young composers of Baltimore realize their first composition. She was a violinist of Peabody String Sinfonia where she toured with the ensemble in the Baltimore community. After relocating to New Jersey in 2022, Seo Yoon co-founded Kensemble, a chamber music group dedicated to bringing live classical music to North New Jersey while celebrating her roots - Korean heritage. Seo Yoon is currently a member of the Composing Earth IV cohort, organized by Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, where she is learning how to engage with the environment as a composer.
Kim has received fellowships, commissions, and awards from the American Guild of Organists, Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and the 4th International "New Vision" Composition Competition in memory of Krzysztof Penderecki. Her music was performed by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Opera Department, Popebama, Bergamot Quartet, Density512, Divergent Studio, Pique Collective, and numerous solo performers.
Seo Yoon is a graduate student in music composition at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, studying with Kevin Puts. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Musicology, Russian language and literature, and music education from Seoul National University, as well as master’s degrees in music composition and music theory pedagogy from Peabody. Seo Yoon’s composition mentors include Michael Hersch, Harold Meltzer, Gabriela Lena Frank, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Byung-dong Paik, Bong-ho Kim, and Mikhail Bogdanov.
Seo Yoon currently resides in Englewood, NJ with her husband, expecting their first baby in July. When not composing or studying, she enjoys birding and litter-picking at local parks.
