Yoonjee Kim is a conductor and pianist akin to a Renaissance artist—her supreme intelligence combined with her wide-ranging abilities enable her to be an equally consummate performer in the fields of orchestral and opera conducting, solo piano and chamber music. 

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As a conductor, she was recently the music director of n[o]ice!, an international music theater project that took place at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in Germany, where she conducted the world premiere of the contemporary opera AI-Cinas Archiv (2025).  (See the performance video here.) Her other recent operatic collaboration was as a guest repetiteur at Oper Frankfurt for its production of Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg (2024). She is also the music director and founder of Solius Orchestra, a group that has toured in Korea for the project "Yeol Eum Son's Amadeus" (2018). In 2019, she won the Best Concerto Accompaniment Award as well as Honorable Mention at the 1st Makris International Conducting Competition.

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As a pianist recognized for her “vibrant sound palette” and “sense of architecture,”  Yoonjee is a prizewinner of international piano competitions in Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA. Having been part of the Perlman Music Program, Yoonjee is also a phenomenal collaborator who has performed chamber music with violinist Itzhak Perlman in venues such as the Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. As a member of an award-winning piano duo Yoo + Kim, she has performed at festivals such as Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad (2014) and PyeongChang Music Festival (2018). (Read the review "Piano duo Yoo and Kim at Gstaad" here.)​

 

Originally from Seoul, Yoonjee grew up in Tokyo, Moscow and New York and trained at the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School as a full-scholarship recipient. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, where she oversaw and conducted a full production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with the Opera Theatre of Yale College. She thereafter received postgraduate degrees in both piano and conducting at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and the Master of Music degree in conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK). Her conducting teachers include Jonathan Brett, Clark Rundell, Mark Heron and Paul Weigold; she has also attended masterclasses by Paavo & Neeme Järvi, Juanjo Mena, Vasily Petrenko, Mark Stringer and Paul McCreesh. 

 

While studying in Manchester, she conducted a performance with the Manchester Camerata, assisted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for Puccini’s Tosca and Haydn's Creation and performed Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at London’s Southbank Centre as part of "Rest is Noise" Festival. She has subsequently been invited as a guest conductor to such orchestras as Palermo Classica Symphony Orchestra and Gwangju Symphony Orchestra.

 

Yoonjee is currently based in Hannover, Germany. She is a lecturer (academic mid-level faculty) for the Voice and Opera Department at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Her interest in languages and literature makes her an avid reader, a polyglot and a certified translator.