Biography

Raised in rural Seosan, South Korea, composer and pianist Yeeun Sim (b.2002) aims to create various atmospheres in her music, inspired by nature, paintings, books, imaginative spaces, and other sources, to draw emotions from her audience. Sim’s main objective as a musician is to convey her messages and feelings through her music while considering its influence in the context of diverse audiences. Particularly, she is interested in not only the artistic meaning of music itself but also music being meaningful as a question to the audience so that they can think about different topics after listening. Moreover, she thinks that music can be a language that can communicate with various emotions that are not easily articulated verbally. Sim believes that art can influence people in diverse areas in numerous ways, which have the potential that can cause a big change in the world.

Sim is a prize-winning composer who won 2024 Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition, 2022 Call for Scores by Liminal Space Ensemble, Third Prize in the Busan Maru International Composition Competition (2023), and Second Prize in the Senior International Division of Golden Key Piano Composition Competition (2020), and was a finalist of the ASCAP Morton Gould Composer Award (2022, 2024) and 13th Fidelio International Piano Composition Contest (2023). She attended the RED NOTE New Music Festival (2022), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival New Music Workshop (2023), Brevard Summer Music Festival (2023), Connecticut Summerfest (2024), Valencia International Performing Arts Summer Festival (2024), Lake George Music Festival (2024), and more. Her works have been performed by notable ensembles, such as Hub New Music, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Liminal Space Ensemble, Neave Trio, Earspace, Black Moon Trio, Mivos Quartet, The Rhythm Method, Old Bay New Music Ensemble, Peabody Conductors’ Orchestra, and TAK Ensemble. Upcoming projects are involved with Toolbox Percussion International Composition Collaborative, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and Tongyeong International Music Festival Academy, where she will be working with Byungmoo Lee (TPICC), Derek Bermel (BIMF) and Unsuk Chin (TIMF).

Yeeun is currently finishing her bachelor’s degree in Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, studying with Dr. Kevin Puts. She will continue her studies for Master of Music degree at the Juilliard School from this fall.