Forty Years On, Sumi Jo Is Still Moving Forward

From her 1986 European debut to an album of newly commissioned music - Sumi Jo marks four decades on the international opera stage, and brings the anniversary to the Philharmonie Berlin on 22 October 2026.

Four decades after her European opera debut in 1986, the Korean soprano Sumi Jo is marking the anniversary not with a retrospective but with new work. "I'm still moving forward as I've done before," she says, describing an ongoing curiosity about what more she can give to herself and to the world.

The anniversary year has brought Continuum, an album of fourteen newly commissioned pieces by contemporary composers rather than familiar repertoire, released under an exclusive agreement with SM Classics. Among its tracks is a duet with Suho of EXO - a crossover instinct Jo has followed before: her 2000 pop-ballad album Only Love sold more than a million copies, an unusual step for a coloratura soprano at the time.

Alongside it comes a twenty-city world tour, opening in Changwon, the region her parents came from. Jo also hosts the second Sumi Jo International Singing Competition in France, which this July drew 500 applicants from 55 countries, and works as a visiting professor at KAIST, where she collaborates with researchers on voice technology, AI duets and holographic performance.

On 22 October 2026 the anniversary reaches the Grand Hall of the Philharmonie Berlin. The programme moves from Donizetti, Vivaldi and Bellini through Viennese waltz and operetta to contemporary Korean works — the same range that has defined her career. She is joined by tenor Sungho Christian Kim, violinist Lidia Baich and pianist Andrey Vinichenko.

Sumi Jo - 40th Anniversary Gala
22 October 2026, 8 pm · Philharmonie Berlin, Grand Hall