Hyunpill Shin (신현필) is a South Korean saxophonist, composer and bandleader, born in Seoul on December 23, 1979, according to Korean Wikipedia and Wikidata. Korean newspapers write his name Shin Hyun-pil. His first album, on Sony Music, and Discogs bill him as Hyunpill Shin, while his later releases on streaming services list him as Shin Hyunpill, and one video platform spells it Hyunphil. All of them are the same musician.

By Korean Wikipedia's account he went to Dongjak High School in Seoul from 1996 to 1998, left a composition course at Sangmyung University, and from 2004 left the practical music department of the Seoul Institute of the Arts before studying performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where its entry gives the years 2006 to 2011 and a bachelor's degree. A BalconyTV biography says he took a double major in jazz composition and performance there, and a 2018 Money Today interview calls him a Berklee alumnus, like the pianist Heean Ko, his duo partner.

His name first reached the Korean public in 2010, when he was named Soloist of the Year at the Jarasum International Jazz Festival. BalconyTV describes it as an award in an international contest held within the festival. Over the next few years he played in bands with the singer Woong San, the guitarist Park Joo-won and the bassist Seo Young-do, and appears on records by Seo's Seo Young Do Electric Ensemble (2013 and 2017), the drummer Han Woongwon (2014) and Jazzotheque, a project credited to Taewon Lee (2014). TenAsia wrote in January 2015 that he was regarded as one of Korea's top saxophonists, that he had worked as the horn-section music director on tours for leading Korean singers including Kim Bum-soo, and that in 2014 he toured Shanghai, Beijing, Hungary, Belgium, Germany and Poland with the fusion ensemble MosaiKOREA and played Washington, D.C. and New York at the invitation of the United States Embassy.

His first album, NU-STREAM, came out on Sony Music Entertainment Korea on November 28, 2012. It has ten tracks, among them "The Night of Hongdae St.", "Dolphin Groove", "Now's The Time" and "Happy Days", with Discogs listing Kim Minchan and Ha Hyeong-ju on drums, Seo Young-do on electric bass and synthesizer, Choi Minho on electric upright bass, JaeBum Cho on percussion and Jeon Yong-jun on piano. The track titles bill the singers Ali on "Now's The Time" and Malo on "Happy Days", and YouTube's label data names Park Joo-won as the arranger and composer of the first and Seo Young-do as the arranger of the second. BalconyTV filmed him and the band playing "Dolphin Groove" in 2014.

His second album, Ordinary Days, was released on September 22, 2014, with thirteen tracks including two short interludes, among them "Dawn (Train To Montauk)", "Meditation", "Blueshouse" and "Lesson From Sungjae". TenAsia reported on January 27, 2015 that his first solo concert in Korea, held six years after his debut to celebrate the album, had sold out. It was scheduled for January 31, 2015 at the venue Bellojou in Seogyo-dong, Seoul, with the guitarist Park Joo-won and the violinist Yun Jong-su as guests, and he handled its planning, direction and video himself. A third album, Falling into the Abyss, followed on September 12, 2017, with nine tracks.

The most visible of his projects is the duo with Heean Ko, a pianist who leads the band Prelude. Dear Chopin (June 5, 2018, issued under licence to Genie Music) reworked eleven Chopin pieces as improvisations for saxophone and piano alone, with no bass or drums. In the Money Today interview the pair said they were not reinterpreting Chopin so much as adding their own breath to what the score gives, and Shin said that since no recording of Chopin playing exists, the written music is the only record. The duo then made Dear Schubert (September 11, 2020) and Dear Mozart (April 18, 2024), plus Iceland, a four-track EP of originals (May 26, 2022, Mirrorball Music). A festival page for the Orford Music series in Quebec lists the duo on its Iceland programme with other Korean-born performers in October 2023.

In 2020 the Jarasum Jazz Festival chose him as the first resident artist of its Jarasum Jazz Residency, with the theme of anxiety. As music director he wrote two pieces, "Fear" and "Hope", and played piano and bass clarinet with the double bassist Wonsool Lee, the cellist Ji Park, the guitarist Taesung Yu and the VRI String Quintet. Mirrorball Music released the seven-piece album Jarasum Jazz Residency I (How to face my anxiety) on January 17, 2021.

He also leads SB Circle (신박서클), a jazz, electronic and gugak quartet with the gayageum player Park Kyungso, the bassist Seo Young-do and the drummer Christian Moran. The name joins the first syllables of Shin and Park, and a festival page says it also means "innovation" in Korean. The group released Topology (April 24, 2019) and Pseudoscience (August 23, 2021), and the Korean Cultural Centre in Berlin presented it at JazzKorea 2022 on October 7, 2022. Other work includes percussion and a co-credit as music director of one piece on the Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra's Neo Sinawi (新, 시나위; Sony Classical, 2020), made alongside Park Kyungso, and his tenor and baritone saxophones on Version (2019), an album by NST & The Soul Sauce with the singer Kim Yulhee that Discogs files under jazz, reggae and Korean folk. Money Today says he has worked on film music and with an Indian band, and an Orford festival page describes him as a member of the Hauz Khas Project, which blends Indian classical, jazz and Korean traditional music.

No interview in which he names his influences was found, so this section sticks to what the records and the press describe. His first album pairs his saxophone with a rhythm section of bass, drums, piano and percussion and two guest singers, and TenAsia and BalconyTV both place him on Korea's jazz scene. Discogs files NU-STREAM under rock and pop with a K-Rock style tag, while Wikidata lists his genre as jazz.

The later work moves outward from there. The Chopin, Schubert and Mozart albums improvise on classical scores for saxophone and piano, SB Circle, by its festival listing, mixes jazz, electronic music and Korean gugak, and the Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra credit places him in a Korean traditional-music ensemble project. Money Today says he has worked on film music, and Discogs lists him on television-drama soundtrack compilations. The Jarasum Residency album shows him writing for a string quintet and doubling on piano and bass clarinet.