Biography.

In her twenty-fourth year of collegiate teaching, violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino (박소현) continues to find great joy and inspiration in mentoring her students as they develop their own voice and expression. Her experiences with playing-related injuries fuel her passion to help and support string musicians and educators in their search for greater freedom while playing their instruments.

Native of Korea, Soh-Hyun grew up around music educators: pianist mother, mezzo soprano grandmother, and a renowed composer grandfather, La Un-Yung. At age sixteen, she came to the U.S. and studied in the preparatory program of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins, where enthusiasm for chamber music and music theory was instilled. She completed her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in violin performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the teaching and guidance of Donald Weilerstein, for whom she was a teaching assistant. She has since performed solo and chamber music and taught in music festivals and master classes in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Korea, Venezuela, and throughout the U.S.

Soh-Hyun taught violin and chamber music at the University of Memphis for fourteen years prior to serving on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received the 2018 Certain-Sandefur Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2019 Vilas Associates research award.

Her current study of interpreting traditional Korean music on the Western violin has given her a new and greater appreciation of her native culture, language, and people. She is deeply grateful for the musicians and scholars who have persisted in preserving traditional Korean music. Her research has been funded by the generous grants from Wheaton College, UW-Madison, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), and the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) in Korea.

She began teaching in the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College in Illinois in 2021 and received the 2025-2026 Senior Teaching Achievement Award. Soh-Hyun, her husband and cellist Leonardo, and son David, live in Wheaton, and they are part of Life Church (www.getalifechurch.com).