Holly Hyun Choe, born in South Korea, raised in Los Angeles, and now residing in Germany, impresses with her presence and radiance on the podium. After serving two years as assistant conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the direction of Paavo Järvi, she remains a highly sought-after guest conductor in both the United States and Europe.
The 2024/25 season is her third one as Principal Conductor of the chamber orchestra Ensemble Reflektor, which sees itself as an ambassador for a musical culture without borders. Since last season, she is also associated with the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève for three years as Artiste associée, and she will conduct the orchestra both in concert and in Gerald Barry's opera Alice's Adventures Under Ground at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in April 2025.
A significant debut in her hometown stands out among her engagements in the current season: in May 2025, Holly Hyun Choe will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time. As part of the Dudamel Fellowship, she will also work alongside Gustavo Dudamel, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Xian Zhang, Natalie Stutzmann, and Philippe Jordan. Another debut will take her to the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, where she will conduct works including Kaija Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Additionally, following successful summer concerts with the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, she will return to the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Orchestre de Paris (with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 among the planned repertoire), the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, and the Kammerakademie Potsdam, with which she will also perform in Munich and Essen. In recent seasons, she has also conducted orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra.
As part of her commitment to promoting female composers, Holly Hyun Choe regularly programs works by Ethel Smyth, Clarice Assad, Grażyna Bacewicz, Lili Boulanger, Britta Byström, Louise Farrenc, Fanny Hensel, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, Emilie Mayer, Caroline Shaw, Dobrinka Tabakova, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Galina Ustvolskaya.
