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Jooyong Ahn, Professor of Music

Jooyong Ahn

Office: Fine Arts Center 305
Email:Jooyong-Ahn@utc.edu
Phone: (423) 425-4614

Professor of Music

Instructor for Applied Instrumental Conducting
Classes:
  • Applied Instruction: Conducting
  • History of Symphonic Music
  • University Orchestra
  • Chamber Music
  • Cadek Community Orchestra
  • Instrumental Conducting
Director:
  • UTC Orchestra Orchestra
  • Cadek Community Orchestra
Other responsibilities:
  • Director of Orchestras
Education:
  • M.M. Orchestral Conducting, RICE UNIVERSITY
  • M.M. Viola Performance, KYUNG HEE UNIVERSITY, Seoul, Korea
  • B.M. Violin Performance, KYUNG HEE UNIVERSITY, Seoul, Korea

Jooyong Ahn is a citizen of the United States and native of Seoul, South Korea. He was educated at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, majoring in violin and viola performance. He performed with major orchestras around the world at many notable music venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia’s Academy Hall. He holds two Master of Music degrees, one in Orchestral Conducting from the prestigious Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He counts among his many honors to date the invitations to attend Tanglewood Music Festival audition and Aspen Music Festival. In 2002, he was honored by a favorable review by Washington Post music critic Daniel Ginsberg on the orchestra and his conducting skills at the debut of the newly formed Washington Korean Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.

Ahn has held the music directorship of orchestras in Korea and the United States and guest conducted many orchestras on four continents: In Europe he conducted the Estonian National Symphony, Latvian Chamber Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Slovak Sinfonietta and Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra of Bulgaria. He toured the Slovak Sinfonietta’s first American tour in 1993 and guest conducted the 1995 International Festival in Tallinn, Estonia; In Asia he held music directorship of South Korea’s Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra with guest conducting of Seoul Philharmonic , Busan Philharmonic, Daegu Symphony, Puchon Philharmonic and Suwon Philharmonic Orchestras; In China the Pan Asia Symphony, Hong Kong and Guangdong International Art Festival orchestra; In the United States he was music director of symphony orchestras in Pennsylvania and Kentucky and South Carolina most recently founding the Atlantic Southeast Ballet Orchestra in Charleston, guest conducting the Charleston Symphony Orchestra at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina 2003 and 2004.

In August 2005, he was chosen to serve as a juror for the Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine with five jurors from Europe and the United States. He served its first competition held in the United States in 2006. In May 2007, maestro Ahn debuted in Shanghai, China guest conducting famed Shanghai Conservatory Orchestra.

In May 2008, he had European opera conducting debut in Milan, Italy conducting La Boheme to celebrate composer Giacomo Puccini’s 150th birthday. In August, 2008 he served as a juror with colleagues from the Juilliard and Eastman schools for an international piano competition in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he also presented conducting master classes and worked with youth orchestras. His participation was sponsored in part by the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires.

In June and July, 2009 he invited by U.S. State Department and Embassy in Buenos Aires to oversee and work with seven selected youth orchestras which is part of famed “El sistema” in Argentina for two weeks. Maestro Ahn gave two public concerts with Orquesta Juvenil de San Martin and Orquesta Escuela Juvenil Chascomus and gave master classes in Salta, Jujuy, Buenos Aires, Chascomus, Berisso, Dolores and Bahia Blanca, Argentina. In February 2010, he served as a juror to select music director for Sinfonia orquesta de Salta, Argentina with two of Argentina’s illustrious musicians Jose Carli and Elias Khayat. He also gave master class and concert at Fundacao musica de Amazonica in Belem, Brazil.

In 2011at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga his orchestra world premiered Harvey Stokes’ Clarinet Concerto featured Nikolasa Tejero as the soloist. In Spring 2012, he conducted the Chattanooga premiere of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha with members of Chattanooga Choral Society for African American Song and its legendary choral director Dr. Roland Carter.

On sabbatical in the first semester of 2011-12 he served as visiting professor at Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea. While teaching there and Qingdao, China maestro Ahn gave two world premieres of American composer Mario Abril’s Elegy Overture for Orchestra written as tribute to late conductor Vakhtang Jordania the famous conductor in pre Glasnost Russia who defected to the U.S. in 1983 and obtained his first position in the U.S. with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera where he settled briefly before moving on to internationally prominent positions - Jordania’s last conducting post before he died in 2005 was in Daegu, South Korea.

In the summer of 2012 maestro Ahn was invited to Harbin, China near the Russian border to guest conduct China’s oldest western instrument orchestra. He has been a tenured professor of conducting at three universities beginning in 1987; Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, Chungnam National University and Western Kentucky University. He served on the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts from 1988-90 and taught at Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts 2001 and 2002. He has presented conducting master classes at Riga National Conservatory in Riga, Latvia, Nacional Conservatorio de Buenos Aires, Argentina and Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai, China. He is presently tenured professor of conducting and director of orchestras at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 2004. Maestro Ahn’s opera credits are Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Gianni Schichi, La Boheme and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflote, Cosi fan tutte, Impresario, Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, and Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha.

Maestro Ahn has recorded and produced two compact discs, one with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, which featured Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 and Fingal’s Cave Overture on the Excelsior label is available at Amazon.com, and another with the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring three bassoon concerti on the SungEum label.