Myung-Wha Chung

A widely admired soloist, chamber musician and teacher, Professor Emeritus of the Korean National University of Arts Myung-Wha Chung has performed around the world for over six decades. In recent years, she led Korea’s PyeongChang (formerly Great Mountains) Music Festival & School as Artistic Director, organizing and directing summer and winter festivals in Korea and abroad including USA, Germany and Austria.

Ms. Chung performed solo and chamber music concerts around the world — New York, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Milan, London, Dresden, Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, Beijing and Hong Kong. Among the orchestras she performed with are Britain’s Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Halle, Birmingham, BBC orchestras, Rome’s Santa Cecilia; Berlin RIAS, Sudwestrundfunk, Beethoven Tonhalle, the Swiss Romande and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra; the Israel Philharmonic, the Barcelona Municipal, the Belgian National, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Goteborg Symphony, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Symphony, the Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit as well as all major orchestras in Korea.

She has been a featured performer in many festivals including Lucerne, Maggio Musicale of Florence, Spoleto, Palma de Majorca, Tivoli, Birmingham, Evian and Dijon. She has performed at the White House, the Hofburg Austrian presidential palace, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and appeared on nationally televised programs in the United States, Europe and Korea. 

Born to a Korean family of extraordinary musicians, she studied with Leonard Rose at Juilliard and Gregor Piatigorsky at the University of Southern California and won numerous cello competitions. 

Her solo and piano trio recordings as part of the CHUNG Trio – with violinist sister Kyung-Wha Chung and conductor/pianist brother Myung-Whun Chung were issued by Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and EMI. She commissioned numerous new works especially from Korean composers and premiered them. She performed and taught children at the “Maestra Chung Myung-Wha Music Village” in PyeongChang and elsewhere in Korea.  

In addition to her performing career, Ms. Chung taught at New York’s Mannes College of Music and the Korean National University of Arts, nurturing a generation of superb musicians. She also pursued social causes, serving as Goodwill Ambassador for such organizations as the UN International Drug Control Program, UNICEF in Korea, the City of Seoul as well as for the Korean National Human Rights Commission. The Korean government conferred on her the Korean National Order of Cultural Merit “Eunkwan.”