Hyun Kyung Lee is a composer, pianist, educator, and arranger originally from Seoul, Korea and now living in New York City. She founded and is co-director of the Global Peace and Music Foundation (GPAMF), whose mission is to create music awakening world peace and addressing related issues; many of her works have been performed through the foundation. From 2018-2019, she led a concert to commemorate the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in New York and Seoul (supported by the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics Organizing Committee and the Korean Cultural Center New York).

Hyun Kyung has received awards from several distinguished Korean organizations, including the Korea Times, the Contemporary Music Society in Seoul, ISCM Section Korea, and the Daegu Contemporary Music Festival; she has also received a scholarship from the Grace Mission Foundation. During her doctoral studies at the Graduate Center at CUNY, Hyun Kyung was awarded the Graduate Center Teaching Fellowship, the Presidential Research Fund for Doctoral Student Travel Grant, an Elebash Scholarship, and the Morton Feldman Composition Award from CUNY Brooklyn College.

Hyun Kyung’s works have been performed by prominent ensembles including the American Modern Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, Contemporaneous, GPAMF Ensemble, Mivos String Quartet, Vigil Ensemble, CME Ensemble, the Korea Wind Society Ensemble, Bangta Percussion Ensemble, Les Beat Ensemble, and the ISCM section Korea.

As an arranger of music, Hyun Kyung has been recognized for her unique orchestrations, most notably her arrangements for the Beatles on Baroque Concert.

In addition, she has collaborated with choreographer Artis Smith. As a pianist, Hyun Kyung has performed with the Korea Symphony Orchestra and the Korea Wind Society Ensemble. She is also an accomplished church musician, having served as an accompanist and music arranger.

Hyun Kyung studied with Professors Tania León, David Schober, Ben Bierman, Jeff Nichols, Ursula Oppens, Anne Stone, Gee-Bum Kim, and Seungwoo Paik. She graduated from CUNY Brooklyn College, where she received her MA in Composition. In 2022, Hyun Kyung received her DMA in Music Composition from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with her dissertation “Unsuk Chin’s Hyper-Sheng: Sonic and Structural Development in Šu for Sheng and Orchestra,” an analysis of Unsuk Chin’s Šu for Sheng and Orchestra. This document examines Chin’s treatment of the sheng and the development of the orchestra in partnership with the solo instrument, focusing on the creation of a “hyper-sheng:” the solo sheng and the orchestra’s collaborative production of a large-scale version of the sheng’s sonic quality and structure. She has presented her paper at the Penn State New Music Festival and Symposium, the International Conference on Women’s Work in Music (WWM) in the UK, the Asian Classical Music Initiative (ACMI), and the CUNY Graduate Center Dissertation Showcase.

Hyun Kyung has been a faculty member at CUNY Brooklyn College since 2014 and is the Director of Composers at the Piano Concert series, a component of the Composer’s Forum.