Suyeon Kang

Violinist Suyeon Kang, raised in Australia and based in Berlin, Germany, has emerged as an important chamber music performer. She won a series of major violin prizes in the middle and late 2010s. Kang was born in South Korea on June 23, 1989. She was raised in Australia (and also for a time in Canada), and she received her first violin lessons at age six from Josette Esquedin-Morgan in Canberra. Kang went on to the Australian Institute of Music, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, taking lessons from Alice Waten and Goetz Richter. At 16, she was named the ABC Young Performer of the Year in Australia. In 2007, Kang moved to Germany and enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik in Nürnberg, where her principal teacher was Daniel Gaede. She continued her studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, studying with Antje Weithaas and serving for several years as her assistant. She also had lessons from Hatto Beyerle and Rainer Schmidt. Kang won first prize at the 2015 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand and also won prizes at the Indianapolis, Buenos Aires, Menuhin, and Leopold Mozart International Violin Competitions. She founded the Trio Boccherini and made her recording debut with that group in 2020, releasing an album of Beethoven's String Trios, Op. 9, on the Genuin label. In 2017, Kang joined the 15-member Camerata Bern in Switzerland, and she was named concertmaster of the Kammerakademie Potsdam in 2021. She has also been in demand as a soloist/leader with various European ensembles, including the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and Ensemble Resonanz. Kang appeared in 2021 with Camerata Bern on the Alpha album Plaisirs Illuminés, and she has made several more albums with Trio Boccherini. She joined the Belcea Quartet in 2023. In 2024, she joined three other up-and-coming chamber players on the album Mélodies Infinies, featuring piano quartets by Fauré and Enescu. Kang is on the faculty at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler and has also been active as an outreach educator, working with the international organization El Sistema and working with the education program of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on a project introducing music into the lives of children with physical or mental disabilities.
© James Manheim /TiVo