Juri Seo

Juri Seo is a composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through a unified and fluid, yet complex, structure. She merges some of the fascinating discoveries from the music of the past century—particularly an expanded timbral imagination and the structural open-mindedness—with her deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. Her music explores the serious and humorous, the lyrical and violent, the tranquil and obsessive by way of fast-changing dynamics and tempi. She hopes to create music that speaks to the subconscious, music that loves, music that makes a positive change—however small—in the world through the people who are willing to listen to it.

Her composition honors include the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship from the University of Illinois, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She holds a D.M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She has also attended the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome, corsi di perfezionamento with Ivan Fedele) and Yonsei University (Seoul, B.M.). In Fall 2014, she joined the composition faculty at Princeton University as Assistant Professor. She currently teaches composition and counterpoint.

Photograph credit: Andrew Wilkinson