Ko-Eun Yi

Korean pianist Ko-Eun Yi, a winner of the 2013 CAG Victor Elmaleh Competition, has earned praise for playing with “élan and fire and a surplus of bravura technique” (Cincinnati Enquirer). She has garnered numerous top prizes in her young career, with recent successes at the 2010 World Piano Competition in Cincinnati and the 2011 Wideman International Piano Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The Washington Post applauded her recent debut recital in DC: “a masterful technician … Her finger-work was immaculate, inner voices were keenly drawn out, and there was no lack of power when needed.”

At the October 2013 CAG competition, Ko-Eun was also awarded the Victor & Sono Elmaleh Piano Prize, and her 2014–15 itinerary includes her February 2015 New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on the CAG New York Series. Other upcoming engagements resulting from her CAG victory include concerto engagements with the Dupage Symphony Orchestra near Chicago and the Roswell Symphony in New Mexico, as well as recitals for Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Recital series (simulcast live on WFMT radio), the Trust Performing Arts Center in Harrisburg, PA and the Art Trail Gallery in South Carolina.

The Cincinnati Enquirer praised her Gold medal-winning concerto performance at the World Piano Competition: “…a fantasy world of shimmering sounds and colors. Her playing was at once flawless and dazzling…”. Additional recent concerto highlights for Ko-Eun include performances with the Barcelona, Jerusalem, and Boston Symphony Orchestras, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Aspen Concert Orchestra, working with such conductors as Lawrence Foster, Leon Fleisher, and Christopher Wilkins. She toured South America playing Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 2 with the New England Youth Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Zander.

A compelling recitalist, Ko-Eun has given solo concerts around the US at Alice Tully Hall in NYC, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, the Bossier Jam ’n’ Bread Chamber Series in Shreveport, LA, and at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, as well as internationally in Spain and Korea.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Ko-Eun Yi began her piano studies at the age of three. She earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School studying with Jerome Lowenthal and completed her Professional Studies degree with André-Michel Schub at Manhattan School of Music. She is now pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Stony Brook University with Christina Dahl.