Cellist Seonhwa Lee has won numerous prizes in international competitions in South Korea, Poland, Denmark, and the USA, and has performed in many notable concerts, including at Carnegie Hall in New York. In the field of musicology, Seonhwa has been invited to present her research at numerous major conferences hosted by universities including Cambridge, Durham, Cologne, Graz, Dublin, Helsinki, Leuven, Manchester and Stavanger, as well as at the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. She currently teaches musicology at the Freiburg University of Music and is pursuing a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Natasha Loges.

Seonhwa was born in Daejeon, South Korea, and has been based in Germany and Switzerland. She began her musical education at the age of four, studying piano and cello, and started vocal lessons at six. At the age of seven, she won first prize in her first cello competition in South Korea, and at nine, she won first prize in a vocal competition. She made her debut as a soloist at eleven, performing Haydn’s C Major Concerto in her hometown. Seonhwa graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the Mannheim University of Music with top marks and the highest honors under the guidance of Prof. Michael Flaksman. She began her master’s studies with Prof. Danjulo Ishizaka at the Dresden University of Music and continued at the Basel University of Music, where she successfully completed two Master of Arts degrees in Music Performance and Music Pedagogy. She completed the Konzertexamen with the highest honors at the Mannheim University of Music. Her work has been supported by scholarships including the Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg, the Theodor Rogler Stiftung, the Müller Foundation, and the Deutschlandstipendium.