JOANNE YESOL CHOI

Korean-Canadian cellist Joanne Yesol Choi, is an avid chamber musician, teacher, and founding member of the Dior Quartet. The ensemble is the Quartet-in-Residence at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music. They have been prize winners of the Fischoff, Chesapeake, and Plowman Chamber Music Competitions, and have competed in the Banff and Bartok International String Quartet Competitions. 
 

Joanne has performed on stages across North America, the U.K, and Germany such as the Banff Chamber Music Residency, Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar at MSM, the Ashkenazi/Kirshbaum Chamber Music Seminar at the Heifetz Institute, SLSQ Seminar at Stanford University, Toronto Summer Music Festival, McGill International String Quartet Academy, Beethoven Haus Residency in Bonn, and the Britten-Pears Program at Snape Maltings with full scholarships. The Dior Quartet made their debut with the Schneider Concert Series in January 2021.
 

As a teacher, Joanne currently coaches and teaches students at the Phil and Eli Taylor Academy, where she was a scholarship student for 6 years during her youth. She is also an Instructor at the Oscar Peterson School of Music, another institution at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She was one of the adjudicators for the 2023 Don Banks Music Awards. 
 

Growing up in Toronto, Joanne was a member of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra and toured Canada as one of the four rotating Principal Cellists of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2014 and was selected as the soloist for Jordan Pal’s The Afar. She has also attended the Meadowmount School of Music and the Aspen Music Festival. 

She has performed in masterclasses for Mischa Maisky, Alisa Weilerstein, Colin Carr, Andres Diaz, Joseph Johnson, David Geber, Dennis Brott, and Johanne Perron. She has collaborated with Orion Weiss, Phillip Setzer, Andrew Wan, Art of Time Ensemble, Owen Dalby, Axel Strauss, Stephen Lemelin, Douglas McNabney and Eric Silberger in chamber music concert settings. 
 

Joanne was included in the 2023 CBC 30 Under 30 Canadian Musicians List. She completed her Bachelors and Masters at Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music and studied with Eric Kim, Brandon Vamos, and the Pacifica Quartet. Joanne returned to continue her studies as a Fellow in the Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program in Fall 2021.