Pianist SooJin Anjou graduated from the Juilliard School in 2002 as the only person ever to win both of Juilliard’s undergraduate commencement prizes, for achievement in music and the liberal arts. While at Juilliard, she was a recipient of the Vladimir Horowitz Scholarship and, having won the school’s annual concerto competition, performed Mozart's Piano Concerto K.482 with the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Otto-Werner Mueller. While still a student, she was prominently featured in Asahi-TV’s documentary “New York, New Yorkers”, which was televised in many parts of Asia and released on DVD.
Ms. Anjou is an avid performer of contemporary music, and composers have been entrusting their work to her since she was 15. As a member of the New Juilliard Ensemble, she premiered or performed works by, among others, Valentin Silvestrov, Elena Kats-Chernin and David Del Tredici. In 1999, she was soloist with the Ensemble in Lee Hyla's Piano Concerto No.2, at Alice Tully Hall. In 2010, she will premiere new works by five composers to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Schumann and Chopin.
In addition to her solo playing, Ms. Anjou devotes herself with enthusiasm to chamber music, especially with voice: she has received intensive coaching from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady and Semjon Skigin on the Lied and opera repertoire, while playing with singers in diverse genres.
A native of South Korea, Ms. Anjou spent her formative years in the United States, making her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at 16 with Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. She became known in Europe after winning a prize at the Robert Schumann Competition in Germany. Ms. Anjou completed her studies at the University of Arts Berlin, with a minor in harpsichord and fortepiano. She is currently based in Berlin, where she is an active member of Live Music Now!, an initiative of the late Sir Yehudi Menuhin that brings live music to people otherwise unable to hear it, through performances in hospitals, nursing homes, schools for the handicapped, and prisons.
Starting in January 2010, she can be heard and seen onstage at the Renaissance Theater Berlin, performing Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in the first German production of Moisés Kaufman’s play “33 Variations”. Other upcoming projects include recitals featuring the complete works of Ravel, and the complete Transcendental Etudes of Liszt.