Uzong Choe

  Uzong Choe studied composition and music theory at Seoul National University (with Byung-Dong Paik and Sukhi Kang), at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (with Bogusław Schaeffer and Franz Zaunschirm) and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (with Emmanuel Nunes).
Choe has worked with director Yoon-Taek Lee and his street theater troupe Yon-Hee Dan. He was the artistic director of Ensemble TIMF (ensemble in residence of the Tongyeong International Music Festival) and is a professor of composition at Seoul National University.
Uzong Choe’s compositions incorporate a vast range of musical styles and aesthetics - from early music to popular music. His recent works, in particular, reflect his research of European polyphony and traditional Korean music, and express his strong interest in music theatre. He has written and directed music theatre productions such as Rose, Francisca based on ‘Hebrew Melodies’ by Lord Byron and The Chorus: Oedipus, and adapted Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Echo et Narcisse for a multi-media performance. In addition, he composed the musical theater Happy Prince, based on a story by Oscar Wilde, and Gwangju, as well as several operas including Love Letter, As the moon flowing on the water, and 1945.
From his studies on the innovation of new music theater and opera based on traditional Korean Pansori, he wrote and directed Birth, and composed a traditional Korean popular music theater piece Jeok-Ro (Song of Dewdrops) in the same vein. Pursuing this idea even further, he wrote the song cycle Chu-Seon(Autumn Fan) for traditional Korean Jung-ga vocalist and piano.