Sumi Hwang

A church choir in Yecheon, in North Gyeongsang, is where Sumi Hwang was first heard singing; she was born there in 1986, took her degrees at Seoul National University, and went on to Munich to study with Frieder Lang, Donald Sulzen and Céline Dutilly. The prizes then came in close order — second at the ARD competition in Munich and first at the Grandi Voci in Salzburg in 2012, the Anneliese Rothenberger in 2013, and in 2014 both the Emmerich Smola Förderpreis and the Grand Prize of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, the year she joined the ensemble of Theater Bonn. She stayed four seasons there, singing Pamina, Micaëla, Fiordiligi, Donna Anna and Mimì, and from the 2021/22 season was a member of the Hessisches Staatstheater in Wiesbaden. The recital platform matters to her as much as the stage: she made her Wigmore Hall debut in 2015 and appears regularly with the pianist Helmut Deutsch. In October 2015 she sang in Sofia at the third Korean–Bulgarian Friendship Concert with the Sofia Philharmonic, beside Eungsoo Kim, Tae-Joong Yang and Georgi Cherkin; in February 2018 she sang the Olympic Hymn, in Greek, at the opening of the Pyeongchang Winter Games. Since September 2022 she has been professor of solo singing at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.