Holly Hyun Choe
About this Artist
Holly Hyun Choe—born in South Korea, raised in Los Angeles, and now living in Germany—impresses with her presence and radiance on the podium. After serving two years as assistant conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the direction of Paavo Järvi, she remains a highly sought-after guest conductor in the United States and Europe.
The 2024/25 season is her third as Principal Conductor of Ensemble Reflektor. She is in the second year of her three-year tenure as artiste associée with the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, and she conducts the orchestra in concert and in Gerald Barry’s opera Alice’s Adventures Under Ground at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in April.
This month, Choe conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time. As a Dudamel Fellow, she works alongside Gustavo Dudamel, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Xian Zhang, and Philippe Jordan. She makes her debut with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, conducting Kaija Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
As part of her commitment to promoting female composers, Choe regularly programs works by Ethel Smyth, Clarice Assad, Grażyna Bacewicz, Lili Boulanger, Britta Byström, Louise Farrenc, Fanny Hensel, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, Emilie Mayer, Caroline Shaw, Dobrinka Tabakova, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Galina Ustvolskaya.
Holly Hyun Choe completed her studies with Johannes Schlaefli at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2023. She learned to play the clarinet at the age of 13 and received her first private music lessons at the age of 19. In 2015, she completed a Master’s degree with Charles Peltz at the New England Conservatory. She has participated in master classes with Bernhard Haitink, Jorma Panula, Fabio Luisi, Peter Eötvös, Sylvia Caduff, and Jaap van Zweden, and has assisted Esa-Pekka Salonen (Orchestre de Paris), Leonard Slatkin (Orchestre National de Lyon), and Simone Young (Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne/Zurich Opera), among others.
In 2018, she was selected for the German Music Council’s Forum Dirigieren. She has also received a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation and a scholarship from the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship and participated in the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation mentoring program.