Alice Yoo
Cellist Alice Yoo has been warmly hailed for her sensitive musicianship, expressive nuance, and passionate commitment to teaching.
PHOTO CREDIT: Balazs Borocz
Cellist Alice Yoo has been warmly hailed for her sensitive musicianship, expressive nuance, and passionate commitment to teaching. She has performed extensively throughout the United States and abroad as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.
Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the Denver Chamber Music Festival, she and cellist Matthew Zalkind have created a new chamber music festival in Denver, Colorado that features the world’s most sought-after chamber musicians in world-class chamber music summer concerts all around the city of Denver.
From 2012-2014, Yoo was a member of Ensemble Connect (ACJW), a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School of Music, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. In addition to creating engaging chamber music programs for detention centers, hospitals, and other community centers in all five boroughs of New York City, she was a guest teaching artist in Edward R Murrow High School in Brooklyn for two years.
Yoo is currently on the chamber music faculty at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. She previously held the post of guest cello professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder during the 2018-2019 and 2022 school years. Other teaching posts include faculty of cello at the Green Mountain Music Festival, Boulder Cello Festival, Guest Artist at the 2019 and 2021 Intermountain Suzuki String Institute, faculty of cello and chamber music at Bard College’s Preparatory Division, and masterclasses and residencies across the United States including Skidmore College, North Dakota State University, and more.
She is a top prize winner in several competitions, including the Holland-America Music Society Competition, Schadt International String Competition, National Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition, and Klein International String Competition. Solo appearances with orchestra include the USC Chamber Orchestra, Longmont Symphony, Cleveland Philharmonic, New York Classical Players, Billings Symphony, and the Bozeman Symphony. Her performances have been featured and broadcasted on Colorado Public Radio, Chicago’s WFMT, and Boston’s WGBH.
Passionate for new music, Yoo has worked closely with the esteemed composers Sophia Gubaidulina, Jennifer Hidgon, György Kurtág, Paul Wiankco, and John Harbison. She has given world premieres of acclaimed composers Samuel Carl Adams and Andy Akiho at Carnegie Hall. Recent recordings include Pierre Jalbert’s String Trio for Music at Copland House, music of the Tonight Show band The Roots, and works by Andy Akiho and Derek Bermel with Grammy award-winning producer Judith Sherman.
A native of Bozeman, Montana, Yoo’s teachers include Ralph Kirshbaum, Dr. Ilse-Mari Lee, Richard Aaron, and Paul Katz. She holds degrees from the New England Conservatory, Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, and the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.