DONGHOON SHIN – COMPOSER
Born in South Korea in 1983, Donghoon Shin studied composition at Seoul National University with Sukhi Kang and Uzong Choe. He moved to London in 2014, studying with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and with Sir George Benjamin at King’s College London.
“The most promising new work by a young composer I’ve heard in years.”
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
In 2010 Donghoon Shin won the Gran Prix of the ANM-BBVA International Composition Concours, followed by the Goethe Award in 2013 from the Goethe Institut and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Major awards over the past decade include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2016, a UK Critics’ Circle Music Award for Young Talent in 2019, and the Claudio Abbado Prize in 2022. In 2017-18 he served as Young Composer in Residence with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group through Sound and Music’s Embedded Scheme and in 2019 was selected as a composer laureate for three years by Ricordilab.
“A composer of colour, a composer of new dimensions – I’m very impatient to see what he can achieve.“
François-Xavier Roth, conductor
Donghoon Shin’s music has been performed and commissioned by prominent orchestras, ensembles and festivals such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Spanish National Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Recherche, Festival d’Automne à Paris and Tongyeong International Music Festival.
“Kafka’s Dream shimmered and glimmered, offering a stylised kind of theatricality.“
Neil Fischer, The Times
Recent works include Threadsuns (2024), concerto for viola and orchestra, premiered by Amihai Grosz and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Tugan Sokhiev, with further performances in Seoul, Minnesota, Vienna and Tokyo. Nachtergebung (2022), concerto for cello and orchestra, inspired by the Austrian Expressionist poet Georg Trakl’s poems, was first performed by Bruno Delepelaire and the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko, has travelled to Edinburgh and was toured in Korea by the BBC Scottish Symphony in 2024. A new Piano Concerto for Seong-Jin Cho and the London Symphony Orchestra by Maxime Pascal will be premiered in November 2025 in London.
Donghoon’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
“Kafka’s Dream managed to say exactly what it wanted in a series of vivid, elegant gestures that never outstayed their welcome.“
Andrew Clements, The Guardian