Unsuk Chin (Korean: 진은숙 [tɕin ɯn.suk]; born July 14, 1961) is a South Korean composer who creates contemporary classical music. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Chin taught herself to play the piano from a young age and later studied composition at Seoul National University. She also studied with composer György Ligeti at a music school in Hamburg, Germany.

She has received many awards, including the Grawemeyer Award in 2004 for her Violin Concerto No. 1, the Music Composition Prize from the Prince Pierre Foundation in 2010 for her ensemble piece Gougalōn, and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2024. In 2019, writers from The Guardian listed her Cello Concerto (2009) as the 11th greatest work of art music since 2000. Andrew Clements, one of the writers, described the piece as "perhaps the most unique and interesting of all of [her concertos], with four movements that do not follow typical patterns."

Biography

Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul, South Korea. She studied composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University and won several international prizes in her early 20s. In 1985, she won the Gaudeamus Foundation in Amsterdam with her piece Spektra for three celli, which she composed as her graduation project. She also received a grant to study in Germany, where she moved that same year. There, she studied with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1985 to 1988.

In 1988, Chin worked as a freelance composer at the electronic music studio of Technische Universität Berlin, releasing seven works. Her first electronic piece, Gradus ad Infinitum, was composed in 1989. Her first large orchestral piece, Die Troerinnen (1986, rev. 1990), for women’s voices, was premiered by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990. In 1991, her breakthrough work Acrostic Wordplay was premiered by the Nieuw Ensemble. Since then, it has been performed in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America. Chin’s collaboration with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which led to several commissions from them, began in 1994 with Fantaisie mécanique. Since 1995, Chin has been published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. In 1999, she began an artistic collaboration with Kent Nagano, who has since premiered six of her works.

Chin’s Violin Concerto No. 1 was awarded the 2004 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. It was premiered in 2002 by Viviane Hagner. Since then, it has been programmed in 14 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, and performed by artists such as Christian Tetzlaff, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Simon Rattle in 2005.

In 2007, she was awarded the Kyung-Ahm Prize.

Chin’s works have been performed by orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others. Her works have been conducted by Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel, Myung-whun Chung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Péter Eötvös, David Robertson, and George Benjamin. Chin’s music has been highlighted at the 2014 Lucerne Festival, the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, the Suntory Summer Festival, the 2013 Stockholm Concert Hall’s Tonsätterfestival, and at Settembre Musica in Italy. In 2001/2002, she was appointed composer-in-residence at the Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Chin was closely associated with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra from 2006 to 2017, at the invitation of Myung-whun Chung, as their composer-in-residence and director of their Ars Nova Series for contemporary music, which she founded. The series presented more than 200 Korean premieres of central works of classical modernism and contemporary music. Chin later became the orchestra’s artistic adviser. From 2011 to 2020, she oversaw the London-based Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series at the invitation of its then chief conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chin has been appointed Artistic Director of the Tongyeong International Music Festival from 2022 onwards.

Style

Chin does not think her music belongs to any one culture. She mentions several important 20th-century composers who have influenced her work, including Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis, and György Ligeti. Chin says her experience with electronic music and her interest in Balinese Gamelan music have also shaped her compositions. In her orchestral piece Miroirs des temps, Chin uses techniques from Medieval composers like Machaut and Ciconia, such as musical palindromes and crab canons, which are patterns that repeat in reverse or mirror-like ways.

The texts in Chin's vocal music often come from experimental poetry. Sometimes, the texts are self-referential, meaning they talk about themselves, and use methods like acrostics (words that start with the letters of a sentence), anagrams (words made by rearranging letters), and palindromes (words that read the same forwards and backwards). These same methods appear in the structure of her compositions.

Chin has set music to poems by writers such as Inger Christensen, Harry Mathews, Gerhard Rühm, and Unica Zürn. The title of her work Cantatrix Sopranica comes from a nonsensical text by Georges Perec. However, in Kalá, Chin has also composed pieces with less experimental texts from writers like Gunnar Ekelöf, Paavo Haavikko, and Arthur Rimbaud. Troerinnen is based on a play by Euripides, and Le silence des Sirènes combines texts from Homer and James Joyce.

Playful elements are also present in Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland, which is based on the classic story by Lewis Carroll. The opera's libretto (text) was written by David Henry Hwang and Chin. The Munich production, released on DVD by Unitel, was directed by Achim Freyer. It was named "Premiere of the Year" in a 2007 poll by the German opera magazine Opernwelt.

Some of Chin's works are inspired by ideas from other areas, such as art. Her orchestral piece Rocaná is connected to the art installations of Olafur Elíasson. Her ensemble works Graffiti and cosmigimmicks were influenced by pantomime (a type of performance art) and the work of Samuel Beckett.

Portrait CDs and DVDs

• Composer: Unsuk Chin. Work Title: Akrostichon – Wortspiel and other works. Performer: ensemble intercontemporain. Format: CD. Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon. Year: 2005
• Composer: Unsuk Chin. Work Title: Alice in Wonderland. Performer: Bayerische Staatsoper, Kent Nagano. Format: DVD. Publisher: Unitel. Year: 2008
• Composer: Unsuk Chin. Work Title: Rocaná, Violin Concerto. Performer: Viviane Hagner, Kent Nagano, Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Format: CD. Publisher: Analekta. Year: 2009
• Composer: Unsuk Chin. Work Title: Xi and other works. (Reissue of Akrostichon – Wortspiel CD). Performer: ensemble intercontemporain. Format: CD. Publisher: Kairos. Year: 2011
• Composer: Unsuk Chin. Work Title: Three Concertos. Performer: Myung-whun Chung, Alban Gerhardt, Sunwook Kim, Wu Wei, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Format: CD. Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon. Year: 2014

Other selected recordings

• Spektra for Three Cellos. Part of: Ladder of Escape 6. Composed by Taco Kooistra, Viola de Hoog, and Eduard van Regteren Altena. CD. ATTACCA, 1992
• Allegro ma non troppo. Part of: Fifty Years Studio TU Berlin. EMF Media, DVD 054, 2008
• Cantatrix Sopranica. Part of: Sprechgesänge – Speech Songs. Performed by musikFabrik and Stefan Asbury. CD. WERGO, 2010
• cosmigimmicks. Part of: "Dokumentation Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2013." Performed by Celso Antunes and Nieuw Ensemble. CD. WDR, 2013
• Fantaisie mécanique. Part of: "Euclidian Abyss." Performed by Vimbayi Kaziboni and Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie. CD. Ensemble Modern Records, 2013
• Gougalōn. Part of: "Contact! 2012–13 season." Performed by Alan Gilbert and New York Philharmonic. Mp3-CD. New York Philharmonic Records, 2013
• Six Piano Etudes. Mei Yi Foo. Part of: Musical Toys. CD. Odradek Records, 2012
• Six Piano Etudes. Yejin Gil. Part of: "Fulgurances." CD. Solstice, 2013
• Advice from a Caterpillar, bass clarinet solo (2007, 8 minutes) from Alice in Wonderland. Performed by Fie Schouten. CD: Ladder of Escape 11, ATT2014140
• Six Piano Etudes. Clare Hammond. Part of: "Etude." CD. BIS, 2014
• ParaMetaString. Esmé Quartet. Part of: "To Be Loved." CD. Alpha, 2020