Jongsoo Hwang

DMA - Conducting

Jongsoo Hwang is a Korean choral conductor, educator, and liturgical music scholar. He earned his bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance from Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea, and a master's degree in Choral Conducting from the College of Music at Florida State University, where he was a student of Rodney Eichenberger and André Thomas. He additionally holds two diplomas in Early Vocal Ensemble Music and Choral Conducting, respectively, from Fontys Conservatorium of Music in Tilburg, Netherlands. While studying in the Netherlands, he conducted choirs including Heilighart koor, Gospelkoor Swing loon, and Resonance Kamerkoor; he also toured the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Georgia, and Korea as a performing member of early polyphony ensemble Cantus Modalis.

After returning to Korea in 2007, Hwang became a director of the Gumi City Chorus, planning and leading the group’s fifty-five professional singers in over sixty concerts each year. In 2012, at the suggestion of the Dean of the Graduate School of Church Music at the Catholic University of Korea, Father Park Won-Joo, Hwang developed the graduate choral conducting curriculum and taught students as the head of the choral conducting department. He also collaborated with ambassadors from South Korea and the Netherlands to produce choral concerts in Seoul and Eindhoven in 2014 to commemorate fifty years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. That same year, Hwang – at the invitation of South Korea’s ambassador to the Vatican – led the renaissance vocal group Musica Sacra Corea in concerts across Rome, Germany, and the Netherlands to commemorate Pope Benedict's visit to Korea. Hwang was also the music director at Mok 5-dong Catholic Church and St. Kim Dae-Geon Catholic Church. As an expert in renaissance music, he frequently lectures on the notation and performance of both renaissance music and Gregorian chant. 

More recently, Hwang oversaw the recording of Father Park Won-Joo's musical settings of all 150 biblical psalms, which was released in June of 2022. The recording can be found on the homepage of Korean Catholic Good News. Hwang is currently a Choral Conducting DMA student in the Department of Sacred Music at the University of Notre Dame and is also a researcher at the Institute of Liturgy and Art in Seoul, Korea.

YouTube: Musica Sacra Corea
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOpbGpphFMvlt6cmKgOiYQ