Chaerin Im (임채린) is a pianist, composer and improviser born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1999, who has lived and worked in Amsterdam since 2017 and now divides her time between that city and Seoul. Her exact birth date is not published, and no source states her citizenship. Her music runs from acoustic jazz piano to a synthesizer-heavy blend of electronic textures, indie pop and free improvisation, and her debut album as a bandleader, Midnight Resets, was nominated for a 2025 Edison in the Netherlands in the newcomer category. Wikidata and the German Wikipedia give her birthplace as Seoul and her birth year as 1999; the Hangul form of her name appears on the German Wikipedia and in her MusicBrainz entry.

Her festival biography describes her beginnings in the demanding classical piano scene of Seoul, where she says the culture was built on mastery and fast adaptation. In 2017 she moved to Amsterdam to study jazz piano at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, according to BIMHUIS and the German Wikipedia, and the Conservatorium calls her an alumna. The same festival biography credits Amsterdam's academic rigor and Rotterdam's rougher, more social scene with shaping her sound.

Her first releases were made on the Seoul side. Florescent, a four-track EP credited to Chaerin Im and the singer Horim, came out on May 10, 2019 on a Korean label called MUSIC&NEW, and appears in MusicBrainz and on Apple Music; it is not listed on Discogs or on her own site. In 2022 she co-led The Back of Beyond with the Korean composer and producer Song Youngnam (송영남). The record was released digitally on October 19, 2022 by Sounds Good, a record shop and label in Seoul's Yeonnam-dong, and on vinyl in 2023. It is built from one short motif that is transformed across eight tracks, with elements of classical music, free improvisation and ambient music. She wrote and arranged it with Youngnam and invited four musicians she knew from Amsterdam: the bassist Matteo Mazzù, the drummer Miklós Kovács, the alto saxophonist Micheal Murray and the trumpeter Antonio Mariano Moreno Glazkov. It was recorded at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with release shows at Sounds Good Store in Seoul on January 19, 2023 and at BIMHUIS in Amsterdam on February 10, 2023. Her site lists press for it from Windout in Italy, Visla Magazine and Mixmag Korea in South Korea, and Popeye in Japan. She also plays piano on "Warm Hands," a track on Youngnam's 2023 EP KURO.

In Amsterdam she became a sought-after sideman. She is the pianist of the drummer Sun-Mi Hong's quintet, on Third Page: Resonance (Edition Records, 2022, recorded December 8 and 9, 2021) and Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest (Edition Records, 2025), alongside the trumpeter Alistair Payne, the tenor saxophonist Nicolò Ricci and the bassist Alessandro Fongaro. The Wikimedia Commons caption for a photograph of the group at Kongsberg Jazzfestival on July 8, 2022 names her as the pianist. She is the pianist on the bassist Jasper Høiby's 3 Elements album Like Water (Edition Records, 2024), and on the alto saxophonist Alice Leggett's Birdsong (ZenneZ Records, 2025). On the guitarist Reinier Baas's Relief Party (Dox Records, 2024) she plays piano on "Negative Nancy." Her site also names Pablo Held, Ben van Gelder, Oene van Geel and Ernst Reijseger among the musicians she has recorded or performed with, and she was selected as one of the Jonge Makers at Jazzfest Amsterdam in 2023.

Recognition arrived in 2024. At the Keep An Eye International Jazz Award final at BIMHUIS on April 18, 2024, themed on the music of Carla Bley, first prize went to the group Alice Leggett & Chaerin Im Orchestra, in which she played piano and synthesizers beside Leggett, Ask Morris on tenor saxophone, Mazzù on bass guitar and Pedro Nobre on drums. Her own biography gives the first prize as hers as a leader. In the same year the Dutch daily NRC named her one of its Young Artists of the Year, according to her site and to North Sea Jazz and Gashouder listings. She was also on the North Sea Jazz bill that year, leading the closing jam on July 12, 2024.

She formed the Chaerin Im Quartet with the guitarist Siebren Smink, the bassist Matteo Mazzù and the drummer Ludvig Søndergaard. They made their debut at a BIMHUIS Supersession in March 2024. Midnight Resets followed on Dox Records, released digitally on March 14, 2025 and on vinyl in April 2025, with the saxophonist Nicolò Ricci as a guest. The label describes it as a collection shaped by a transformative summer in 2024 and by love and heartbreak, and a departure from her reputation as an acoustic improviser. The Edison Jazz nominees for 2025 were announced in July, and the awards were presented on October 6, 2025. She played North Sea Jazz again on July 11, 2025 with a trio, and the quartet played a terrace concert at BIMHUIS on July 26, 2025.

In autumn 2025 she released the Aïe Aïe EP on Dox Records, on October 10, 2025, with a trio of bassist Paddy Fitzgerald and drummer Ludvig Søndergaard, and with the saxophonist and electronic musician Otis Sandsjö on "We Are Not a Sampler." Her Bandcamp text describes the EP as a letting go of pressure and perfection and of her earlier resistance to the jazz trio. It was released on cassette in an edition of twenty and at a BIMHUIS release show on November 27, 2025.

In 2026 she was the Artist in Focus of North Sea Round Town, the Rotterdam festival that runs alongside North Sea Jazz. From June 25 to July 12, 2026 she presented nine concerts, centered on a new project called Phase Shift, a meeting of Seoul and Rotterdam, with a trio, her band Neon River and a concert with the Laurenskerk organist Hayo Boerema. She also played with the German pianist Florian Herzog's quartet Almost Natural, which she joined in 2025, with Sun-Mi Hong's quintet, and with the Ludvig Søndergaard Sextet, and in 2026 she appears on the guitarist Atsushi Fukuroku's Acceptance (Live in Amsterdam) (Somethin' Cool, released September 24, 2026) and on Søndergaard's Creature Dances.

She is a different person from the animation filmmaker Chaerin Im (born in Seoul in 1994), the classical pianist Im Yunchan (임윤찬) and the pop and lo-fi acts billed Chaerin or CHAERIN.

Im's own descriptions of her sound change with the project. Her festival biography calls her music untamed electronic jazz and names Floating Points, Dorian Concept, Salami Rose Joe Louis and Sam Gendel as influences. It says she is interested in how digital processing can sit alongside acoustic instruments without losing the energy of a live band. The Gashouder listing for her 2026 trio describes a mix of modern jazz, Korean indie music, cinematic instrumentals and ambient electronica, built on a hybrid set-up of acoustic grand piano and synthesizers, and says that dissolving the boundary between improvisation and melody is the core of her style. BIMHUIS calls the quartet's music indie pop meeting improvisation, with grooves, electronics and adventurous improvising, and notes that the title track of Midnight Resets even carries a metal riff.

On whether she is primarily a jazz artist, the evidence points mostly one way. All of her leader releases that Discogs lists carry Jazz as their genre, her education was in jazz piano at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, her career runs through BIMHUIS, North Sea Jazz, Jazzfest Amsterdam and the Edison Jazz awards, and her sideman credits are almost all with Dutch and European jazz leaders. Her own site also lists some pop and electronic work outside that world, including party music produced under the name Sunburst Club for Warner Music Korea and a piece composed, arranged and performed for the Korean acts Kirin and HYNGSN, and Discogs lists a track appearance on a 2026 Korean vaporwave compilation, The 可愛い Mall. Her indie-pop and electronic leanings are woven into her jazz work rather than forming a separate career.