🌟 2026 German Jazz Prize Nominee
🌟 Debut Jazz Albums Selection — 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“A bold and creative new voice in the ranks of contemporary big-band composers and arrangers.”
— Jack Bowers, All About Jazz
“Her music stands between worlds—not East or West, but something fluid, alive, and entirely her own.”
— Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move
“From reflective tributes to high-energy grooves, “City Suite” captures both the pulse and poetry of New York through Seo’s distinctive voice—a remarkably assured debut that honors the city’s jazz lineage while claiming its own territory.”
— Tim Larsen, Jazz Views
“If you want a master class in large-scale musical thinking, arranging, and band leading, you could hardly do better than this ambitious and programmatically brilliant suite.”
— Rick Anderson, CD HotList
“A debut bright with color, charisma, and spectacular composition.”
— Dee Dee McNeil, Musicalmemoirs’ Blog
“Her imagination and skill have produced a marvelous album.”
— Jim McNeely
Rin Seo composer, conductor
Steve Wilson piccolo, flute, soprano sax, alto sax
Ethan Helm soprano sax, alto sax
Dan Pratt flute, clarinet, tenor sax
Andrew Gutauskas clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone sax
John Lake trumpet
Ingrid Jensen trumpet
Adam Unsworth horn
Nick Grinder trombone
Joyce Hammann violin
Sita Chay violin
Orlando Wells viola
Jody Redhage Ferber cello
Sebastian Noelle guitar
Adam Birnbaum piano
Matt Clohesy double bass
Jared Schonig drums, percussion
Produced by Alan Ferber and Rin Seo
Engineered and Mixed by Brian Montgomery
Mastered by Dave Darlington
Released on October 3, 2025, on Cellar Music
Rin Seo Collective is a 14-piece chamber jazz orchestra led by Korean composer Rin Seo. The ensemble blends jazz orchestra writing with chamber music intimacy and orchestral depth.
Their debut album, City Suite (2025), encapsulates Seo’s decade-long artistic and personal journey in the United States as a female immigrant composer based in New York City. The work reflects her experiences of ambition, struggle, isolation, nostalgia, solidarity, and resilience shaped by urban life.
Each movement draws from a wide range of influences, including film music language, Afro-Cuban rhythmic traditions, Korean traditional music, and deeply personal moments of loss and transformation. The result is a cinematic suite that portrays New York not only as a physical place, but as an emotional landscape of identity and becoming.