Donghoon Shin

Born in South Korea in 1983, Donghoon Shin studied composition at Seoul National University with Sukhi Kang and Uzong Choe. He moved to London in 2014, studying with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and with Sir George Benjamin at King’s College London.

In 2010 Donghoon Shin won the Gran Prix of the ANM-BBVA International Composition Concours, followed by the Goethe Award in 2013 from the Goethe Institut and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Major awards over the past decade include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2016, a UK Critics’ Circle Music Award for Young Talent in 2019, and the Claudio Abbado Prize in 2022. In 2017-18 he served as Young Composer in Residence with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group through Sound and Music’s Embedded Scheme.

In 2019 Shin was selected as a composer laureate for three years by Ricordilab, with works including Of Rats and Men (2019) for chamber orchestra, premiered by the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Peter Eötvös, Kafka’s Dream (2018/19), inspired by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s essay about Kafka and first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, and the cello concerto Nachtergebung (Night Surrender) for Bruno Delepelaire and the Karajan Academy premiered by Kirill Petrenko in Berlin.

Works under a new publishing contract with Boosey & Hawkes have included Shin’s double concerto for sheng, accordion and orchestra, Double Act, composed for soloists Wu Wei and Pascal Contet and premiered in 2022. Osmo Vänskä conducted the first performances in 2023 of Upon His Ghostly Solitude, reflecting on poetry by W. B. Yeats, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, and its Asian premiere followed with the Seoul Philharmonic under the baton of Jaap van Zweden.

Shin composed his viola concerto Threadsuns, inspired by the writings of Paul Celan, for Amihai Grosz who gave the premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic under Tugan Sokhiev in 2025. His Winter Sonata has been toured internationally by violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Shin’s most recent work is a Schumann-inspired Piano Concerto for Seong-Jin Cho, premiered with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2025, with future performances planned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Shin’s music has been performed and commissioned by prominent orchestras, ensembles and festivals such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Spanish National Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Recherche, Riot Ensemble, EXAUDI ensemble, Festival d’Automne à Paris and Tongyeong International Music Festival.

Since 2025 Donghoon Shin has been resident in Berlin and London. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

February 2026

This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes