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Wan Heo

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music

Wan Heo is a South Korean-born composer, whose works have been performed internationally in South Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Spain, and throughout the United States. Her percussion solo Unveiled Future is published by Alfonce Production.

Wan’s music has been featured at the Darmstadt Summer Course, SEAMUS, Yarn/Wire Institute, Unheard-of Ensemble’s Collaborative Composition Initiative, line upon line’s Winter Composer Festival, New Music on the Point, highSCORE Festival, and the Valencia International Performance Academy (VIPA), among others. She received an Honorable Mention for the Christine Clark/Theodore Front Prize in the IAWM New Music Search.

Her doctoral dissertation explores the vulnerability of South Korea’s sonic environments through field recordings made at Buddhist mountain monasteries. Works from this project have been presented at NYCEMF, the Composition in Asia Conference, the Society of Composers National Conference, the North American Saxophone Alliance Regional Conference, and the National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME). She is the recipient of two competitive research awards from Northwestern University: the Graduate Research Grant and the Buffett Institute’s International Dissertation Research Travel Grant.

Wan holds a B.M. in Composition from Ewha Womans University and an M.M. in Composition from Florida State University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Composition and Music Technology program at Northwestern University, where she works under the guidance of Alex Mincek, Stephan Moore, Chris Mercer, and Jay Alan Yim.