Biography

Biography


Hi Kyung Kim is a composer noted for her creative unification of contemporary Western and traditional Korean musical vocabularies into an original musical voice. Described by the Washington Post as a master of Asian and Western genre-blendingKim received an international education, earning a B.A. from Seoul National University and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. At UC Berkeley she received the Ladd Prix de Paris, which enabled her extended studies at IRCAM and at École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1988-1990).  Her teachers include Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérard Grisey and Sung-Jae Lee.  Since 1992 she has been a Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  

At UC Santa Cruz, Kim has been the artistic director of the Pacific Rim Music Festival since its inception in 1996. The festival, an innovative celebration of new music, has gained international recognition for bringing together both Eastern and Western performers and composers at the forefront of their fields in the creation of new musical works.

Her honors include Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission at the Library of Congress, Fromm Music Foundation Commission, Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA grant, Arts Council Korea grant, Fulbright Senior Scholar awards, the Asian Cultural Council and the Korea Foundation grants, as well as grants from the University of California Inter-Campus Arts Program, which made possible the establishment of the Pacific Rim Music Festival.

Hi Kyung Kim's compositions have been performed internationally by Yo-Yo Ma and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Ensemble, Rohnert Park Symphony, the University of California Berkeley Symphony, Speculum Musicae, Antara, Millennium Chamber Players, EarPlay, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Parallèle, Empyrean Ensemble, Lincoln Trio, Alexander String Quartet, Borromeo String Quartet, New Asia String Quartet, Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea, Ensemble Rituel, Aki Takahashi-Rae Imamura, Jean Michel Fonteneau-John Sackett duo, and featured in many Festivals and venues internationally. 

As two-time recipient of the Fulbright Senior Scholar award, Kim has conducted in depth research on Korean music, and collaborated with a number of Korean artists.  Her collaborative projects include three major multi-media works titled Rituel for Korean and Western ensembles and Korean dance featured at several venues worldwide.  A new collaborative and multi-disciplinary work, Thousand Gates for the Ensemble Rituel, previewed at the Smithsonian Institution, includes visual images by the Korean photographer Koo Bohn Chang. Thousand Gates is currently in preparation for an expanded presentation. 

Among her recent projects, Kim has worked with the Borromeo String Quartet on several new pieces, including the completion of an unfinished Clarinet Quintet by Andrew Imbrie. Commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association. It was premiered by clarinetist Richard Stolzman and the Borromeo String Quartet.  Along with these ensemble projects, Kim also has enjoyed working on a series of solo works for several instruments to explore the possible realms of each instrument.

Hi Kyung Kim has served as a guest composer and a keynote speaker at the Korea Society of Woman Composers and was a featured composer for the Hún Qiáo  (Bridge of Souls) project Premiere Concert of Remembrance and Reconciliation, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  She was invited as a composer to represent the third generation of composers at the Asia Society in New York for the Four Generations of Asian Composers project, and she was a keynote speaker and a composer at the UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education in 2010.  Recently she was invited by the Korea National Gugak Center as a Fulbright senior scholar working with traditional orchestras for the All-Premiere Orchestra project.

Hi Kyung Kim is a composer of unusual originality, creating music of distinctive, highly artistic quality, music with character. It is not music of two cultures joined, but music of a culture of her making.   

(-Robert Commanday,  San Francisco Classical Voice-)

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