Jun Sung Ahn American YouTuber Born 1993 in Seoul

Early life

Jun Sung Ahn was born on 18 February 1993 in Seoul. In the third grade he moved with his family to West Windsor, New Jersey, and in the fifth grade he began learning classical violin, performing in competitions and recitals. He has said that he chose the instrument because it was versatile and its character suited his personality.

He went on to study radio, television and film at Northwestern University rather than music. While there he joined the university orchestra and a dance crew called Refresh. By his second year, in 2012, he was no longer studying violin formally, though he kept playing.

Career

In July 2011 Ahn began recording violin covers of pop songs and posting them on YouTube under the name Jun Curry Ahn, with the middle name playing on his ethnicity. Within about sixteen months his channel had 17 million views and 130,000 subscribers. His covers of that period included Adele's "Skyfall" and Taylor Swift's "Red". He worked with other YouTube musicians such as Arden Cho and Sungha Jung, and with Refresh on a vocal, dance and violin cover of Big Bang's "Blue".

On 7 July 2012 he won the annual Kollaboration Chicago competition with a performance combining violin and the Chinese yo-yo, and in the autumn he competed at the Kollaboration Star Finale in Los Angeles. In July 2012 his dance and violin version of Psy's "Gangnam Style", published a few weeks after the original, passed 2.4 million views and won first place in a contest run by Psy in South Korea. In the video he appears to clone himself so that he dances and plays the violin at once. In September 2013 he reported working as an intern at MNET America.

In August 2014 he was a special guest at the KCON convention in Los Angeles, opening for acts including VIXX, IU, B1A4, Teen Top and G-Dragon, with a violin version of Taeyang's "Eyes, Nose, Lips" and a dance cover of BEAST's "Good Luck". Later that month he performed at the 626 Night Market in California alongside the musician Joseph Vincent. By autumn 2014, during his final year at Northwestern, he had more than 500,000 subscribers, and his best-known video, a cover of "Let It Go", had passed 3.8 million views. A critic for Asia Pacific Arts wrote that his "Shake It Off" cover put his own twist on the music video, mixing violin with comic attempts at martial arts and Indian dance. In August 2015 he performed again at KCON LA and then opened at the first KCON New York.

On 13 May 2016 he joined the group BgA, whose members also include the YouTuber Ryan Higa, the musician David Choi, the filmmaker Philip Wang and the actor Justin Chon, in releasing the parody K-pop video "Dong Saya Dae", which reached a million views on its first day. His character in the video is Jeungri, an aspiring YouTuber and K-pop star. On 25 June he opened at KCON New York before artists including Mamamoo, Eric Nam, Ailee, Day6 and BTS, performing a violin version of BTS's "Save Me". At KCON LA on 30 July he played in the pre-show and held a meet-and-greet. Billboard noted in August 2016 that he had nearly one million YouTube subscribers. On 2 September 2016 he was one of twelve YouTube stars at the YouTube FanFest in Seoul.

In early 2017 he took part in a Harry Potter medley arranged for two violins, cello and piano, which New York Public Radio featured in February. He attended the first KCON Mexico in March, played Jeungri in a Wong Fu Productions skit, "My K-Pop Boyfriend", and appeared in BgA's second parody video, "Who's It Gonna Be", which received more than six million views within days. On 3 August 2018 he released his first solo music video, "Hold It Down".

He describes his violin style as slightly playful. Because he covers many vocal songs, he listens to a song for several days and then plays it by ear, trying to give the violin the same human tone as the original voice, and he sees his videos as a portfolio with a cinematic quality that reflects his interest in film.

Recognition

Ahn won the Kollaboration Chicago award in 2012 and first prize in Psy's "Gangnam Style" cover contest the same year.