BIOGRAPHY
Seonju “Sunny” Jo is a South Korean pianist, collaborative pianist, educator, and researcher based in Texas. She will join Stephen F. Austin State University as a full-time Staff Pianist, where she will support students, faculty, and ensembles through collaborative performance. She has also served as Collaborative Staff Pianist and Adjunct Faculty in Piano at the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor, Teaching Assistant in Piano at The University of Texas at Austin, and Piano Faculty at Clavier-Werke School of Music. Jo holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from The University of Texas at Austin, where her work brought together solo performance, collaborative piano, chamber music, pedagogy, and research.
As a pianist and collaborator, Jo has performed in a wide range of solo, chamber, vocal, instrumental, choral, and contemporary music settings. Her performances have taken her to venues and festivals including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the International Keyboard Odyssiad Festival, the Austin Flute Festival, and university concert series in the United States and South Korea. She has collaborated with singers, instrumentalists, choirs, chamber ensembles, and new music ensembles, supporting students and colleagues in lessons, rehearsals, juries, recitals, auditions, competitions, guest artist concerts, and outreach performances.
Jo is a prizewinner in several international and institutional competitions. She received First Prize in the Sidney W. Endowed Scholarship in Piano Accompanying Competition at UT Austin and was a finalist in the UT Austin Mozart Piano Concerto Competition. Her performance career includes solo and collaborative appearances in degree recitals, chamber concerts, new music performances, guest artist programs, and community engagement concerts.
As an educator, Jo is committed to student-centered teaching that nurtures technical growth, expressive freedom, musical confidence, and independent artistry. Her teaching experience includes applied piano, class piano, keyboard musicianship, private piano instruction, and masterclass teaching. She has worked with students of varied ages, backgrounds, and levels of preparation, guiding them in technique, sound production, practice strategies, stylistic understanding, and performance preparation.
Jo is also active as a researcher and presenter in piano performance and pedagogy. Her presentations include “The Art of Pedaling: Enhancing Musical Expression through a Practical Guide for Performance Excellence,” presented at the TMTA Conference, MTNA Collegiate Symposium, NCKP Piano Conference, and ADMTA, as well as “Raising Professional Pianists through Piano Repertoire from Young Beginner to Intermediate Stages,” presented at the MTNA National Conference.
Her recent doctoral research, “Framing Silence in Hyo-shin Na’s Autumn Study (2023) and Five Friends (2021): An Analytical Approach through East Asian Aesthetics,” explores silence as a performable musical material shaped through notation, timing, resonance, pedaling, and listening. Drawing on East Asian aesthetic concepts such as ma and liubai, her work connects analytical inquiry with performance practice and examines how performers actively shape silence rather than simply observe rests.