Hailed as a performer of “captivating enthusiasm, with superb technique, warm emotional lyricism and explosive energy” (The Piano), Min Kwon enjoys a versatile career as soloist, recitalist, collaborator, teacher, administrator and artistic director. Her performance and pedagogical activity has taken her to over sixty countries on seven continents.
Currently Chair of Keyboard Studies at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where she has served on faculty since 2002, Min Kwon is the founder and director of the Center for Musical Excellence (CME), a non-profit organization dedicated to mentoring and supporting gifted, international young musicians. She has also served as Co-Director of Vienna ConcertoFest in Austria, a two-week summer festival providing intensive training and extraordinary opportunities for young artists to appear as soloists with the Vienna International Orchestra in prestigious venues throughout Austria.
Min Kwon has appeared as soloist in Europe, North and South America, Europe and Asia, with orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Fort Worth Symphonies, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Estaudo Mexico, Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela, Wiener Residenz Orchester, Bacau Philharmonic, as well as all of the major orchestras in Korea on several nationally televised concerts. Since her Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center debut in 1992 with the Juilliard Orchestra, she has appeared with many of New York’s leading ensembles, such as New York Classical Players, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Sinfonietta. Recent and upcoming concerto highlights include Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto with KBS Orchestra at the Korea International Music Festival, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at the Brevard Music Festival, and the East Coast premiere of Robert Aldridge’s Piano Concerto at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Among the distinguished conductors she has collaborated with are James Conlon, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Alan Gilbert.
In collaboration with violinist Yoon Kwon, the duo recorded for RCA Red Seal / BMG in 1996 as the first Koreans to do so in the company’s 100 year history. Additionally, Min Kwon has recorded “Schubert and Liszt”, released by MSR Classics, which received a Grammy Award (David Frost, Best Producer of the Year, 2009). The American Record Guide called this album “a full conquest of the music’s temperament and technical demands.” With Viennese pianist and conductor Robert Lehrbaumer, she has recorded the four-hand piano music of Schubert. Her solo album Dance! Is to be released December of 2016, featuring works by 19 composers spanning 300 years. She was artistic director, performer, and a producer for MSR Classics’ recently released recording CME Presents: Piano Celebration, celebrating composers and pianists from 17 countries with solo and four-hand piano music, emphasizing the cultural cross-pollination that influenced such diverse composers as Samuel Barber, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Francis Poulenc, Earl Wild, Johannes Brahms, Darius Milhaud, Astor Piazzolla, Ernesto Lecuona, and Carl Rzewski.
A sought-after teacher, her creative leadership and pedagogical efforts at Rutgers has received numerous accolades: The New York Times called the program “The Unknown Diabelli Variations” in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall “a remarkable evening that revealed a wide range of pianistic and compositional gifts among the students.” The New York Concert Review noted that the Rutgers piano department is “on par with the world’s most prestigious conservatories.” Min Kwon has given masterclasses worldwide and served as artist faculty at Shanghai and Beijing Central Conservatories, Hong Kong University and HK Academy of Fine Arts, National University of Singapore, Royal College of Music in London, Kuhmo International Music Festival in Finland, Vianden Music Festival in Luxembourg, and numerous US universities and conservatories including The Juilliard School, Mannes School of Music, and New York University. Winner of dozen national and international competitions herself, Min Kwon has adjudicated for numerous regional, national and international competitions.
Min Kwon received a B.M. from The Curtis Institute of Music and an M.M. and D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where she was the winner of the Gina Bachauer International Award. She has further pursued her studies in Salzburg, Austria. She counts among her teachers and influences Eleanor Sokoloff, Martin Canin, Leon Fleisher, Hans Leygraf, Dorothy DeLay, Jerome Lowenthal and Leif Ove Andsnes. Min Kwon is a Steinway Artist.