So-Young Yoon
Waltons New School of Music Faculty
Piano • Jazz Piano • Jazz Theory & Improvisation • Jazz Piano Basics
So-Young was born in Seoul, Korea, where she was classically trained from an early age and won several local and national music competitions. She also studied jazz piano at the Seoul Jazz Academy, the Korean sister school of Boston’s renowned Berklee College of Music. After moving to Ireland in 2003, So-Young received a BA in Jazz Performance degree with First Class Honours from Newpark Music Centre (now the Jazz and Contemporary Music Performance Department of Dublin City University), where she studied with leading pianist Phil Ware and composer Ronan Guilfoyle. She went on to receive an MPhil in Music Composition from Trinity College Dublin, where she studied with Evangelia Rigaki and Simon Tresize. And she has also received a Licentiate Piano Teaching Diploma (LRIAM or HDip) from the Royal Irish Academy of Music. So-Young has performed as a pianist, composer and arranger with numerous ensembles in all of Dublin’s main jazz venues, as well as with her own quintet, for which she composes original music. Her notable performances include three concerts in the National Concert Hall, one of which was a sold-out event in which she led a six-piece band in a critically-acclaimed radical rearrangement of the music of Thelonious Monk; ‘Introducing the So-Young Yoon Quintet’ at the Goethe-Institut Ireland; and Jazz Prelude, a composition for flute, cello and piano, first performed by the Kirkos Ensemble at the School of Creative Arts, TCD. So-Young has taught piano and jazz piano to students of all ages and skill levels with the New School since 2007.
‘In the classroom, my students don’t just play for me; I also play for my students. I believe the drive for music learning, which requires unwavering dedication and commitment, stems from the desire to create beautiful sound and exciting energy. For this reason, I also play my students’ pieces myself to demonstrate their beauty as best as I can, in the hope that this will contribute to the students’ appreciation of the music and their desire to learn it.’
‘Ask Miles’ – Miles Davis’s ‘All Blues’ interpreted by So-Young Yoon.
‘Jazz Prelude’ – Composed by So-Young Yoon
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