Eugenia Choe (유지니아 최) is a Korean-American jazz pianist and composer who was living in New York City as of 2025. Two All About Jazz reviewers write that she was born in South Korea, and her own biographies say she spent her early childhood there before growing up in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Her label's biography says her family emigrated from South Korea and settled in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, and that as the only fluent English speaker in the household she took a large part in the family's affairs. No source gives her birth date, birth year or birthplace within Korea, and her citizenship is not stated anywhere. Her releases and Discogs bill her as Eugenia Choe. Korean press writes 유지니아 최, and some Korean listings put the family name first, as 최 유지니아.

She studied mathematics and classical piano performance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where her biography names the Bach, Chopin and Schumann specialist William Heiles as her teacher. In New York she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the New School for Jazz, studying with Reggie Workman, Sam Yahel, Chico Hamilton and Charles Tolliver, and then a master's degree in jazz piano at SUNY Purchase under Kevin Hays, David Hazeltine and John Abercrombie. Degree years are not published. These teachers are named in her own and her label's biographies; no recording credit with any of them is listed.

Her debut as a leader, Magic Light, came out on SteepleChase in April 2016. It is a piano trio record with the bassist Danny Weller and the drummer Alex Wyatt, who the All About Jazz reviewer James Nadal wrote had been with her for several years. Eight of its ten tracks are her own compositions, and the other two are Billy Strayhorn's "A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing" and Benny Carter's "When Lights Are Low". The trio played the release concert at Cornelia Street Cafe in New York on April 13, 2016. Dan McClenaghan, also at All About Jazz, called her a new-to-the-scene pianist who entered the field in a big way and wrote that the album could be the debut of the year. Nadal, who describes her as a Korean-born and classically trained pianist, heard a waltz called "Maison de Cresent" that runs on the traditional Korean jungjungmori rhythm. Her website says McClenaghan and Ken Dryden of the New York City Jazz Record and Hot House each named the album best debut of 2016.

In the autumn of 2016 the trio made its first international tour. It played the 13th Jarasum International Jazz Festival, held October 1 to 3 in Gapyeong, South Korea. Korean newspapers announcing the lineup listed the Eugenia Choe Trio among the acts from abroad, and the Gyeonggi Shinmun described it as one of the teams in which Korean musicians active overseas perform with foreign players, in her case a group based in the United States. Her website says the trio also played three Seoul shows, at All That Jazz, Changdong Platform 61 and I Have a Dream, and two concerts in Tokyo, at Thelonious and Nardis.

The same trio recorded Verdant Dream for SteepleChase, released in late 2018. It has ten tracks and one standard, "Blue in Green". Mark Sullivan, reviewing it for All About Jazz on February 5, 2019, found it a step beyond her debut and described the trio sound as refined and original. A third trio album was a long time coming. Her label's biography says she led piano trios in the New York area for nearly a decade, then stepped away from music for a time because of family issues and the pandemic. On returning she met the Taiwanese vibraphonist Yuhan Su, and the two began meeting on Sundays for improvised sessions. When an old friend, the Berlin-based vocalist Song Yi Jeon, said she would soon be in New York, Choe recast several pieces for the three of them. They recorded at Acoustic Recording in Brooklyn on September 21, 2023, and played the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn three days later, on September 24.

The result, So We Speak, was released on Sunnyside Records on February 7, 2025. It has nine tracks, all composed and produced by Choe, with her on piano and Fender Rhodes, Su on vibraphone and Jeon on voice. She built the album's story around an imaginary girl named Margie, a stand-in for herself, who learns to endure and adapt in the city. Two titles come from Korean life: "Nabiya" is based on a Korean lullaby and takes its name from the Korean word for butterfly, and "You Get What You Paid For" grew from advice her mother gave her. "River Farm" is named for the suburb where she grew up. Textura wrote that the finesse of her classically influenced playing is perhaps the album's primary selling point. In Korea, the Genie Music magazine's album column found her stronger as a composer than as an improviser for now, while crediting the interplay of the three.

She took the music to Asia in the first days of February 2025. The Korean jazz newsletter Jazz Docent announced a release tour of Korea and Taiwan for February 1 to 9 and noted it was her first visit to Korea since Jarasum nine years earlier. A Daegu jazz club, Verious, advertised the trio on February 7, 2025, and the Korea Performing Arts Box Office Information System lists a concert on February 8, 2025 at a venue called 재즈인연구소, with Choe, Su and Jeon. She told Textura she explained the story behind each tune to the audiences, many of them first-time jazz listeners, and that "we laughed and cried together through my music". On March 26, 2025 the trio, with the vocalist Sara Serpa in Jeon's place, played the album release concert at The Jazz Gallery in New York.

In 2024 she also spent a residency in Switzerland, which she called one of her most memorable experiences, living in the Alps with nothing to think about but writing music. In the Textura interview she said she planned to record a collective quartet project, Table Talk, in April 2025, and a third piano trio album that summer. No release from either has been found.

She says she likes to play every style of jazz, from traditional to modern, and that her own writing blends classical, almost chamber-like elements into a modern jazz sound. Interplay and group improvisation matter to her, and she lets her bandmates shape the music on stage. She calls herself a storyteller, in compositions and in performance. Two influences stand out in her own account. Brahms has been among the strongest since she started piano, and she says his counterpoint and harmony turn up in her writing and even in her improvising. Bill Evans has been the most influential figure since her first day of playing jazz, for his feel, technique, harmony and arranging. She recorded "Blue in Green", the standard credited to Miles Davis and Evans, on Verdant Dream.

Her early albums are piano trio records. Reviewers heard the first as a set of originals exploring light and nature and the second as more varied, with a bebop-leaning tune, a bird-song piece and a folk-flavored closer. So We Speak swaps the rhythm section for vibraphone and voice, with passages of free improvisation between composed themes and some scat singing.

Her scope is not in doubt. She has led jazz trios since the mid-2010s, played jazz clubs and festivals, released on two jazz labels, and no other genre identity competes with it. Discogs lists her releases under jazz.