Hyeseon Hong (홍혜선) is a composer, arranger and bandleader who writes for a large jazz orchestra and draws on Korean melody and rhythm. She is a native of Seoul, South Korea, and she has worked in both New York and Seoul for many years; her orchestra is based in the New York area. She has led two albums with the Hyeseon Hong Jazz Orchestra, EE-YA-GI (2017, Mama Records) and Things Will Pass (2024, Pacific Coast Jazz), and she composed and arranged every piece on both. Her date of birth is not published.

Her Seoul years come first. The Korean Cultural Center New York says she spent many years studying art in her native Seoul, and the center's biographies describe her as someone who approaches a score the way a painter would, making "sonic pictures" of the natural world. A Korean-language notice for her 2013 concert at the center says she studied composition at Yonsei University in Seoul, then jazz composition and arrangement in the graduate program at New York University, and afterwards performance and orchestral composition at City College of New York with Ron Carter and Dan Carillo. The Jazz Gallery's 2019 listing of her work also says she studied at NYU, and a review of her first album calls her an NYU graduate. The same notice says she formed a four-horn-and-rhythm ensemble in 2000, worked in Manhattan, and returned to Korea in 2004, where she composed and arranged for several musicals. She has moved between New York and Korea since, and her orchestra now plays mostly in the New York area.

Birdland in Manhattan has listed the orchestra on October 22, 2017, September 11, 2022, May 5, 2024 and October 13, 2024, and it has also played concert series on Long Island and in Jersey City. The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, New York presented it on June 17, 2022, and the Exchange Place Alliance presented it at its Pier Stage in Jersey City on May 30, 2026. Korean Cultural Center New York has listed several of these dates, and the center hosted an earlier concert by her orchestra at Gallery Korea on April 25, 2013, a free evening of original pieces that combine traditional Korean music with jazz. In January 2019 she was one of three composers in the Jazz Gallery's Composers' Showcase, performed by a New York big band. A 2017 listing says her first orchestra CD was partly funded by the Copland Grant.

EE-YA-GI (the Korean word means "stories") was recorded at the Bunker Studio in Brooklyn on March 14 and 15, 2016 and released in May 2017. It has seven pieces and features the tenor saxophonist Rich Perry and the trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. The lineup includes Ben Kono, Matt Vashlishan, Jeremy Powell and Andrew Hadro among the reeds, Broc Hempel on piano, Matt Panayides on guitar, John Lenis on bass and Mark Ferber on drums, with E. J. Park and Subin Park singing wordless vocals. "Boat Song" is built on a traditional Korean folk melody, and Subin Park sings on it. JazzTrail, Jazz Weekly and All About Jazz reviewed the record, and Jazz Music Archives gave it four stars out of five.

Things Will Pass followed on August 23, 2024. It has nine pieces, all composed by Hong except for the lyrics to one track, played by a large orchestra with Perry as the featured tenor soloist. Matt Vashlishan produced it with Panayides as co-producer, and Hong played auxiliary percussion. The Korean Cultural Center New York describes the album's theme as personal reflection and resilience after a major loss, and Roots Music Report says the title reflects her belief that all hardships are temporary. Reviews appeared in Making a Scene, Roots Music Report, PS Audio's Copper, Couleurs Jazz and All About Jazz. Birdland listed a concert of the music on October 13, 2024.

Hong writes for a full jazz orchestra and builds Korean material into it. JazzTrail hears Korean melodic grace joined to a fantasy that recalls Duke Ellington in "Harvest Dance", which she based on a traditional Korean rhythm. All About Jazz describes her approach as taking traditional folk forms, mainly Korean, and giving them modern big-band harmony, and Jazz Music Archives places her arranging in the line of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, with melodies from Korea added. Roots Music Report lists her influences as Maria Schneider, Gil Evans and Thad Jones, along with the film composer Ennio Morricone and the composers Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Bartok, and says she composes mainly at the piano and came to New York through her interest in theater music.

The Korean element is not decoration. "Boat Song" uses an old folk melody in 6/4, "Memoirs of Ladies" on Things Will Pass is a tribute to the strength of women that Roots Music Report says uses a wooden flute and a gayageum, the Korean zither, and other pieces are written in an American big-band idiom. Roots Music Report hears musical-theater elements in "Run Away", where Aubrey Johnson sings a wordless melody. JazzTrail notes that Jensen and Perry both played in the Maria Schneider Orchestra.