Biography.

Violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino (박소현) is widely recognized as a gifted teacher and a versatile performer of solo and chamber music. Praised for her “poise and precision,” she has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician and has taught at music festivals and master classes around the world.

Before joining the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music in 2021, Soh-Hyun taught for twenty years at public institutions—the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Memphis. A recipient of the 2018 Phillip R. Certain-Gary D. Sandefur Distinguished Faculty Award at UW-Madison and the 2025-2026 Senior Teaching Achievement Award at Wheaton College, Altino finds great joy in mentoring students as they discover and develop their own voice and expression on the violin. The playing-related injuries she experienced in college served as a powerful vehicle in her coming to faith in Jesus as her Savior, and those insights continue to fuel her passion for supporting string musicians and educators in their pursuit of greater freedom in their playing.

A native of Korea, Soh-Hyun grew up surrounded by music educators: a pianist mother, a mezzo soprano grandmother, and a renowned composer grandfather, La Un-Yung. At sixteen, she came to the U.S. to study at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she developed a strong affinity for chamber music and music theory. She went on to earn her bachelor’s, master’s, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a student and teaching assistant to Donald Weilerstein. She studied chamber music with Anne Epperson and the members of the Peabody Trio as well as the Juilliard, Concord, Cavani, and Cleveland Quartets. 

In 2019 Soh-Hyun began a new study of interpreting traditional Korean music on the Western violin, a project supported by research grants from UW-Madison, the Association for Asian Studies, the Academy of Korean Studies in Korea, and Wheaton College. In 2023, she presented lectures and world premieres of the Kim Ilgu school of ajaeng sanjo on the violin at college campuses across the U.S., and in 2025, she performed the same sanjo at the prestigious Jeonju International Sori Festival in Korea. Critics have applauded her work as “embodying the core spirit of the sanjo genre” and as “setting a new milestone in the history of Korean music.” On a personal level, this journey has reconnected her with her native culture, language, and people; she remains deeply grateful to the composers, performers, and scholars who have persisted in preserving traditional Korean music.

Soh-Hyun and her husband, Leonardo Altino, frequently perform together, have recorded an album En Voyage of chamber music for violin and cello, and enjoy traveling with their son, David.