Unsuk Chin was born in South Korea in 1961 and began studying piano and musical theory on her own at a very young age. She went on to study composition at Seoul National University under Sukhi Kang until 1985, and performed as a pianist at the Pan Music Festival.

Her composition Gestalten was selected for the World Music Days of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Canada in 1984 and the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers. In 1985, she received a fellowship from the DAAD to go to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where she stayed until 1988, studying with György Ligeti. She has made her home in Berlin since 1988.

Her compositions have featured in numerous festivals and concert cycles around the world, in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries. Her Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991) has been performed in many countries, by groups such as Ensemble Modern, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Nieuw Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Her graduation piece, Spektra, won the Gaudeamus Award from the Gaudeamus Foundation in Amsterdam in 1985, and Santika Ekataka came first in a composition competition for an orchestra piece commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese government in Tokyo in 1993.

Unsuk Chin was a composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2001-2002 and received a commission for her Violin Concerto, which they premiered in 2002 with Viviane Hagner, conducted by Kent Nagano. Several other concertos followed: a Double Concerto for piano, percussion, and ensemble (2002); Šu for sheng and orchestra (2009); a Cello Concerto (2006-2008, revised in 2011); and a Concerto pour clarinet (2014).

Other works if note include a cycle of piano études (1995-2003); ParaMetaString for quartet and electronics, which was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet (1996); and several ensemble pieces, among them Gougalon: Scenes from a Street Theater for Ensemble (2009-2011); Fantaisie mécanique (1997); Xi (1998) and Fanfare chimérique (2011), both of which were premiered by the Ensemble intercontemporain; Rocaná for orchestra (2008), which was premiered by Kent Nagano in Montreal; cosmigimmicks, which premiered in 2012 at the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw; and Graffiti, which premiered in 2013 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

She has also composed major pieces for solo vocalists, such as Miroirs des temps, a BBC commission for the Hilliard Ensemble and the London Philharmonic (1999-2001); Kalá, co-commissioned by the Danish Radio Symphony, the Gothenburg Symphony and the Oslo Philharmonic orchestras (2000); and Cantatrix Sopranica for two sopranos, counter-tenor, and ensemble, a commission from the London Sinfonietta (2004-2005). These were followed by other pieces, including an opera, Alice in Wonderland, based on the book by Lewis Carroll, which premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in June 2007; Le Silence des Sirènes, which premiered with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in 2014; and Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles for choirs and orchestra, which premiered with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016.

In 2022, she started a five year tenure as Artistic Director of the Tongyeong International Festival in South Korea and her Artistic Directorship of the Weiwuying International Music Festival in Taiwan.

Unsuk Chin’s work is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Prizes and awards

• Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 2024
• Leonie Sonning Music Prize 2021
• Kravis Prize 2020
• Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg 2019
• Sibelius Prize from the Wihuri Foundation for International Prizes 2017