Meet Ko-Eun Yi!

Ko-Eun Yi was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. While no one in her family is a musician — her father is a consultant for start-up businesses and her mother spends significant time as a ­volunteer — her parents love music and there was always a lot of it in their home. When Ko-Eun’s brother, who is four years older, began piano lessons, three-year-old Ko-Eun was drawn to the piano, very curious about the “sound box” and amazed by the magic coming out of it. She said that even at that young age she could feel how the sound transformed the atmosphere of the room.

Ko-Eun’s parents encouraged this interest in their younger child and were very supportive, with her mother taking her to concerts and helping her listen to lots of music. She notes that there were no iPads so music was the main thing to feel and experience! At five, Ko-Eun began lessons with her brother’s teacher, whom she describes as patient and ­encouraging, and who helped her to enjoy learning. She also credits this teacher with instilling in her the “important stuff,” such as the correct way to hold her fingers, from the very ­beginning, and says that without this teacher’s early ­guidance she would not have been able to proceed. For her part, Ko-Eun enjoyed the progress she made for each ­lesson. By age seven she was winning competitions.

After five years with her first teacher, Ko-Eun entered the ­Korean National University of the Arts Preparatory School, where she progressed very well. At ten she won her first ­competition in the U.S. and at 13 won a competition at the Aspen Festival. Then, at 14, she came to the U.S. and ­enrolled at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, Massachusetts, which describes its music department as “the only high school program linking a major conservatory, New England Conservatory, with an independent school.” Ko-Eun spent grades 9–12 at Walnut Hill and had lessons at NEC once a week. However, she says that the most difficult part of her studies was learning English, which is quite different from Korean!

After graduation from Walnut Hill, Ko-Eun earned her ­Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at Juilliard and completed her Professional Studies degree at Manhattan School of Music. She then earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University. She has won a number of ­prestigious prizes and maintains a busy schedule of concerts, recitals and teaching in this country and around the world, all of which you can read more about at koeunyi.com.

Ko-Eun and her husband live in Leonia, NJ, across the ­Hudson River from Manhattan. She says there are a lot of Koreans in the community, which means there are also a lot of good ­Korean restaurants! But they also count Italian, Japanese and Turkish food among their favorites. They enjoy going to the gym and listening to all kinds of music, although Ko-Eun sticks to classical when at the piano. Watching action movies in ­English and Korean movies on Netflix is a favorite pastime, as is traveling to explore all the U.S. has to offer.

Ko-Eun describes Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major from 1930 as a piece very influenced by jazz rhythms with a host of ­different emotions that can change very quickly. The first movement is “full of surprises between sections, with a cadenza leading up to a very exciting end,” the second movement is “more peaceful and dreamy, like watching stars in the sky;” and the third movement is fast and exhilarating, “a rollercoaster to the end!” Come hear the surprises, watch the stars, and ride the rollercoaster with this very exciting pianist at our concert on June 8! 

—Kelly Brest van Kempen