Biography: Bae received second prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1985 an also was a prize winner at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1984. In 1986, he was a recipient of the Solo Recitalist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

As an enthusiastic participant in many of the world’s best chamber music festivals, he traveled everywhere from Seoul to Alaska. He was an artistic director of the Bargemusic Ltd., one of the leading presenters of chamber music in New York City, for thirteen years until 1995.

His latest project was as a concertmaster of the Hwaum Chamber Orchestra in South Korea, a conductor-less string orchestra. He led them to Krakow, Poland and Puerto Rico at the Casals Festival.

Much sought after as a pedagogue, Bae taught at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Korean National Institute for the Arts, as well as giving masterclasses worldwide. Ik-Hwan Bae was on the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music from August 1999 until his death in 2014. He recorded for the RCA, ECM, Delos, and Koch labels. Bae was also a jury member of the Munich ARD competition in Germany, the Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition in Denmark, and the Benjamin Britten International Violin Competition in London.