Dr. Steve Sang Kyun Koh is currently the associate professor of violin at Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Performing Arts. Prior to his appointment, Koh served as the head of strings and the co-artistic director of the New Music Festival at University of Northern Iowa.
Koh is co-founder of the Interro String Quartet and has been the recipient of several grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Council for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts. Along with his performances with the Interro Quartet, he has shared the stage with violists Leslie Robertson and Teng Li, cellists Antonio Lysy and Brian Manker, violinists Nikki Chooi, Yehonatan Berick, Alexander Kerr, and Adam Barnett-Hart. In addition to these performing activities, he has performed with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as a soloist with the Winona Symphony and the Wartburg Community Symphony.
His research interests range from string pedagogy to jazz to music technology. Published in November 2017, his dissertation, "Spaces in Between: A Swing-Informed Approach to Performing Jazz- and Blues- Influenced Western Art Music for Violin," examines the challenges performers face when trying to balance interpretation with understandings of composers’ intentions.
He is also co-founder of Anima-AI Technologies Inc., a software company specializing in music generating artificial intelligence and the author of patents related to AI-guided audio processing and music generating systems. For his work at Anime-AI, he has been a guest speaker at Accelerator Centre's Founder's Roundtable, participant of Zú Incubation Program, Creative Destruction Lab (Montreal), Future Star Qiji Communicity (Beijing), and has been a finalist at various pitch contests around North America.
Koh received his Bachelor of Arts at Rice University, where he was the recipient of the Herbert & Helen Allen scholarship and the Dick and Mary Ellen Wilson scholarship. After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he received his Master’s in string performance and pedagogy at Northwestern University, where he was the recipient of the Emily Boettcher and Yule Bogue Endowed Fund and the Dick Eickstein Grant. At University of Toronto, he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree as the Palmason Graduate Fellow in violin and served as an adjunct instructor in violin from 2017 to 2019.
Publications
"Spaces in Between: A Swing-Informed Approach to Performing Jazz- and Blues- Influenced Western Art Music for Violin," November 2017.
