Echae Kang (강이채) is a South Korean violinist, singer-songwriter, composer and conductor, born in 1988 in Jinju, who has worked mainly in Seoul since returning to Korea from Boston in 2014. She is billed as Echae Kang on her albums, on Discogs, at Berklee and on her YouTube channel; the Korea Herald, which calls her a jazz violinist, and Apple Music's pages for her solo records write the name in Korean order as Kang Echae, and Melon files her under 강이채 and her duo under 이채언루트 (Echae en Route). Her birth date is not settled: the Discogs profile gives December 10, 1988, while Melon's artist page lists October 12, 1988. Her public career splits in two. She is the leader and conductor of Dear Jazz Orchestra, which Korean press bills as the country's first string jazz orchestra, and she trained in jazz at Berklee. Most of her own records, though, are indie singer-songwriter releases, and Korean press and music stores file them mainly there.

She took up the violin at six, received a classical education and, by her own account to the Korea Herald, found jazz in middle school through Django Reinhardt's "Minor Swing." After thirteen years of classical violin, Berklee's student profile says, she enrolled at eighteen in the Seoul Jazz Academy, a Berklee International Network partner, auditioned there and won a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Discogs profile dates her Berklee years 2008 to 2011. She studied with the jazz fiddler Darol Anger, named the cellist Eugene Friesen as a hero and served as concertmaster of Friesen's World String Orchestra and of the Video Game Orchestra. Berklee's profile says she played with Mark O'Connor at the launch of the school's American Roots Music Program, performed at Symphony Hall with the Video Game Orchestra, arranged Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen" as a gypsy jazz piece that the World String Orchestra took to the Kennedy Center, and soloed with the bassist Ron Carter when he visited as a guest artist. A video on her channel shows her playing the cadenza from O'Connor's double violin concerto with the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra. In Boston she also appears on Discogs as the violinist on Louise van Aarsen's CD Destiny (LAvanA Music, 2012).

Back in Korea she formed the duo Echae en Route with the bassist Kwon Ohkyung (권오경), who was then a member of The Solutions. The format is unusual: violin, bass and her voice, with no drums or guitar of their own, and she plucks and taps the violin as well as bowing it. Their first EP, Madeline, came out on April 1, 2015, with the singer Sunwoo Jung-a (선우정아) directing the vocals on "달데이트" and the gypsy-jazz guitarist Park Ju-won (박주원) playing electric guitar on it. The Hankyoreh later noted that the EP's "Uneasy Romance" was used in the tvN drama Another Oh Hae-young and introduced the duo to a wider public. A single, "Night Drive," followed on March 8, 2016, and the debut album Echae en Route, seven tracks made with support from CJ Cultural Foundation's Tune Up programme, was released on September 18, 2018 and filed by Discogs under jazz and classical. Madeline was reissued on vinyl in April 2025 on The Vault, with "Night Drive" added.

Her first solo album, Radical Paradise, was released on October 12, 2016 on Private Curve, with Warner Music as distributor. She wrote, arranged and produced all thirteen tracks. The record features the singer Kim Feel (김필), whom she says she met in a music club in Jinju, on "Terminal," the bandoneon player Koh Sangji (고상지) and the guitarist Mathias Minquet on "Gyp" and "Now I See," and the bassist Daeho Kim (김대호) on five tracks; "Something Cold" is built live from a loop pedal. Discogs files it under jazz, rock and pop, Melon under rock and indie. In November 2016 the Korea JoongAng Daily called her the "mint goddess of indie music" for her mint-coloured hair and reported that one of her songs had reached third place on the K-IndieChart; the same notice announced a Christmas Day concert at the Sejong Center's M Theater with the pianist Yun Seokcheol (윤석철) and Koh Sangji. Around the album's release the Hankyoreh interviewed her under the headline "not a violinist but a musician," noting that the violin is scarcely audible on the album, and her own solo concert for it took place on November 5, 2016 at Hyundai Card Understage. A single, "어지러워," appeared on March 16, 2017, and on January 4, 2018 she and Yun Seokcheol released the co-billed single "처음 먹는 나이," for which she wrote the lyrics. The EP HITCH followed on March 27, 2018. She told the business daily Newstomato that she had pushed the violin to the background to write in the manner of British rock bands such as Radiohead, The 1975 and The xx, and that her first stage after its release would be the Seoul Jazz Festival in May 2018. Marie Claire Korea listed her again on the 2019 Seoul Jazz Festival bill, and on August 8, 2018 she played the Hammer Museum's courtyard in Los Angeles in a KCON West concert with the singers Ailee and Roy Kim.

After several years without a solo release, she put out the EP The Granter on May 27, 2023, preceded by the single "On Your Side" on May 11, and followed it with "Koi's Kingdom" on December 8, 2023. Her note on the EP says she spent the gap trying every kind of music she had wanted to make, and she plays most of the parts herself: violins, violas, guitars, keyboards and programming, with Lim Sooyoun (임수연) on cello, Jo Hoochan (조후찬) on bass and Jung Sol (정솔) on percussion; the drummer Kim Youngjin (김영진) is credited on two songs. "Koi's Kingdom" is the clearest return to jazz: an instrumental for violin, cello, guitar (Ha Beom-seok), bass and percussion that she composed about the Baekje king Goi, filed under jazz by Melon and Apple Music. A live version from the Dear Jazz Orchestra concert at the Hanam Culture and Arts Center on July 13, 2024 is on the orchestra's channel.

Dear Jazz Orchestra is the thread that ties her to the jazz scene. She told the Korea Herald in October 2024 that she founded it in 2019 to push technically strong classical players into broader styles, while earlier press and festival listings point to a start in 2016 or 2017; the orchestra's own profile sets out both accounts. The same Korea Herald piece presented her as one of the Korean artists at that autumn's Jarasum Jazz Festival and said she was working on film scores, a dream she had held for a long time.

The film work has reached release. As a singer she is credited on the soundtracks of the tvN series Money Game ("Don't," February 20, 2020), the Coupang Play series Decoy ("늪," February 9, 2023) and the film The Second Child (그림자 아이, July 1, 2026), where three tracks carry her name. She plays or sings as a guest on records by Kim Feel ("괴수," 2016), The Barberettes (2016), the group Mother Vibe (2018), the singer Jung Sewoon, whose 2018 mini-album AFTER credits her as co-producer of "닿을 듯 말 듯," the guitarist Ha Beom-seok (하범석, 2021), Sunwoo Jung-a (a 2021 vinyl single) and the rappers Cadejo and Nucksal (2022), the duo Beatsnap (2023, on whose album En Route she sings "Can We Be Alone" and shares its writing credit), and she contributes "사랑이라는 이유로" to the 2018 Kim Kwang-seok tribute album 김광석, 다시. In 2025 she remixed Kim Pureum's "두 배로 야단."

What is not known: a confirmed birth date, any award or nomination, the exact years of her Berklee studies (the Discogs profile says 2008 to 2011, while Newstomato and Melon say only that she returned to Korea in 2014), and whether she is working on a new jazz release. She has no entry on Wikipedia and none on Wikidata.

Her playing and writing run along two lines that meet in the violin. One is gypsy jazz and the Berklee string tradition of Darol Anger and Eugene Friesen: improvising violin, plucked and percussive techniques, a taste for Django Reinhardt that began in middle school, and string-orchestra arranging for the World String Orchestra and, later, Dear Jazz Orchestra. The other is songwriting. Radical Paradise mixes a lone violin and a loop pedal with rock band parts and a dreamy voice; HITCH leans on British guitar bands; the duo with Kwon Ohkyung strips everything down to voice, violin and a bass that carries the melody. Her instrumental pieces, such as "Koi's Kingdom" and "Breezefall" with the orchestra, are where the jazz and classical sides are most audible.

The scope question is real and goes both ways. For jazz: she trained at the Seoul Jazz Academy and Berklee on violin, studied jazz violin with Darol Anger and soloed with Ron Carter; the Korea Herald and the Hankyoreh call her a jazz violinist; she leads a string jazz orchestra that Melon and Apple Music file as jazz; Discogs files the duo's album under jazz and classical; Melon and Apple Music file "Koi's Kingdom" as jazz; and she was booked at the Seoul Jazz Festival and presented with the Korean artists of the 2024 Jarasum Jazz Festival. Against: her debut EP and album were pitched as indie and rock, Melon files Radical Paradise, HITCH, The Granter and the duo's records under indie, rock or R&B, Apple Music files her solo records under singer-songwriter, folk and R&B, much of her recorded work is film and television vocals, and no jazz award or critical jazz review turned up. This profile therefore treats her as a jazz-trained violinist and orchestra leader whose own records mostly sit between indie pop and jazz, and tags her with the closest canonical terms, Crossover Jazz and Jazz Pop.