Jee-Hye Bae

Jee-Hye Bae, born in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea, began playing the cello at the age of 11, studying with Kyoung Ok Park and Chung Shim Baik. In 2014, she joined the Staatskapelle Berlin as an academy member under the direction of Daniel Barenboim and served as Associate Principal Cellist there until June 2017. That same year, she graduated from the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, where she studied with Jean-Guihen Queyras.

She has won several international prizes, including the Naumburg Competition, the Isang Yun Competition, and the Johannes Brahms Competition, and is recognized as one of the leading cellists of her generation in her home country of South Korea. There, she has performed with the Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra, Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Busan Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Korean Symphony Orchestra. In Europe, she has appeared as a soloist with the Baden-Baden Philharmonic and the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic.

Through worldwide masterclasses and performances, she has collaborated with renowned cellists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Bernard Greenhouse, Wolfgang Böttcher, Jian Wang, David Geringas, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Gary Hoffman, Peter Bruns, Jens Peter Maintz, Aldo Parisot, Miklós Perényi, Philippe Muller, and Timothy Eddy.

Since 2017, Jee-Hye Bae has been Associate Principal Cellist of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. She plays a cello made by Giovanni Dollenz, dated 1856