Biography
Pianist SooJin Anjou enjoys an astonishingly varied and extensive international career as soloist, chamber musician and partner in diverse interdisciplinary projects. Born in South Korea, she was educated in the United States, Hungary and Germany, where her main teachers were Ferenc Rados, Klaus Hellwig and Jacob Lateiner. She graduated from the Juilliard School as the only person in that school's century-old history to win both of Juilliard’s undergraduate commencement prizes, for achievement and leadership in music and the liberal arts. While still a student, she was prominently featured in Asahi-TV’s documentary “New York, New Yorkers”, which was televised in many parts of Asia and released on DVD.
SooJin Anjou is an avid performer of contemporary music, and composers have been entrusting their work to her since she was a teenager. She has premiered works by, among others, Valentin Silvestrov, Elena Kats-Chernin and David Del Tredici. In 2019, her world-premiere recording of the complete piano works of electronic music legend Morton Subotnick was released to great critical acclaim (“a magical, beguiling release” — Wire Magazine).
Ms. Anjou also devotes herself with enthusiasm to chamber music, especially with voice: she has received intensive coaching from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady on the lied and opera repertoire. She has a special passion for interdisciplinary projects, creating performances with video artists, dancers and actors. In 2022, she launched an interdisciplinary series of concert and discussions in collaboration with the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC-BIMSB), where musicians and scientists come together to exchange ideas about creative processes and their roles in society.
As soloist, she made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at 16 with Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. She became known in Europe after winning a prize at the Robert Schumann International Piano Competition (Zwickau, Germany), and is also a laureate of the Orléans International Piano Competition (France). Her broad repertoire includes more than 40 concertos, ranging from Bach to Berio, as well as the complete works of Ravel and the complete Transcendental Etudes of Liszt.
In addition to performing, SooJin Anjou is a dedicated teacher at the Jazz Institute Berlin/UdK Berlin (University of the Arts Berlin). She has also taught chamber music and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.
(11/2023) Changes to the text are strictly forbidden!