Jin Hi Kim - Biography

Biography


View more photos	Jin Hi Kim & komungo - download high res

Short Bio

Jin Hi Kim, innovative komungo virtuoso, Guggenheim Fellow composer, and United States Artist Fellow, has performed as a soloist in her own compositions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art, Asia Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art and around the world. The New York Times wrote, “…virtuoso, Jin Hi Kim promises thoughtful, shimmering East-West amalgams in combinations that are both new and unlikely to be repeated.”

In 2021 GRAMMY.com wrote "A Musical Philosopher And Radiator Of Electricity:Jin Hi Kim." She received the New England Foundation for the Arts' Rebecca Blunk Fund Award to create her A Ritual for Covid-19 in memory of the deceased worldwide during the pandemic. This performance is in the spirit of healing of the apocalyptic years of 2020-21.

She is known as a pioneer for introducing komungo (geomungo) into the American contemporary music scene and for extensive solo performances on the world’s only electric komungo with live interactive computer programs in her large-scale multimedia performance pieces such as Ghost Komungobot, Digital Buddha, and Touching The Moons. The Washington Post wrote, "Her unique vision blends science fiction images, state-of-the-art technology, ancient mythology and timeless music and dance traditions. No other artist is doing work quite like this, and she does it with superb style."

Kim’s 'Living Tones' compositions have been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Festival Nieuwe Muziek for Xenakis Ensemble (The Netherlands), Tan Dun's New Generation East program for Chamber Music Society for the Lincoln Center, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Meet The Composer US Commission, National Endowment for the Arts and many others. The New York Times wrote, "A gorgeously tactile piece that moved easily between an earthy folksiness and meditative refinement."

Kim won the Wolff Ebermann Prize at the International Theater Institute (Germany), New England Foundation for the Art' Rebecca Blunk Fund Award, and received Artist Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, which was created by John Cage and Jasper Johns. She received the artist residence fellowships for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy, Asian Cultural Council to Japan and Indonesia, Freeman Artist-In-Residence at Cornell University, Composer-to-Composer Residency with John Cage and international composers in Telluride Institute, Fulbright Specialist Program to Vietnam, Composers Now Creative Residencies at the Pocantico Center of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum, and Music Alive Composer in Residency with New Haven Symphony.

Kim’s autobiography Komungo Tango, a 25 years journey of creative collaborations with master musicians in the USA and around the world, was published in Seoul, Korea. A retrospective interview about Kim's major works was recorded and archived in Oral History of American Music at Yale University Library. Interview about her electric komungo was featured on MBC-TV in conjunction with Korean Traditional Craft Exhibition 2007 at United Nation. In 2001 Korean National Broadcasting System (KBS-TV) produced an hour documentary film on Kim's musical contribution.

Jin Hi Kim with electric komungo - download high res

Full Bio

Jin Hi Kim, innovative komungo virtuoso, Guggenheim Fellow composer, and United States Artists Fellow, has performed as a soloist in her own compositions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art, Asia Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Royal Festival Hall (London), the Festival of Asian Art in Hong Kong, and many significant festivals throughout the North America, Europe, South America, Russia, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

She creates new works with her dual identity between ancient Korean roots and contemporary American society. Kim’s musical life began by studying the 4th century indigenous Korean komungo (geomungo), which was the primary instrument in court orchestra and aristocratic lyric kagok song. As a traditional musician Kim was deeply inspired by Buddhist aesthetics, Korean court rituals and Shamanistic folk music expressions. She is known as a pioneer for introducing komungo into the American contemporary music scene and for extensive solo performances on the world’s only electric komungo with live interactive computer programs in her large-scale multimedia performance pieces such as Ghost Komungobot, Digital Buddha, and Touching The Moons. Jin Hi Kim’s komungo solo pieces represent an evolution of the instrument into the twenty-first century.

Peter Watrous, The New York Times wrote, "virtuoso, Jin Hi Kim promises thoughtful, shimmering East-West amalgams in combinations that are both new and unlikely to be repeated."

Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post wrote, 'Kim performs brilliantly and evocatively on an amplified komungo."

She has developed her compositional concept 'Living Tones' emerging from Korean traditional tone quality. Kim’s compositions have been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Festival Nieuwe Muziek for Xenakis Ensemble (The Netherlands), Tan Dun's New Generation East program for Chamber Music Society for the Lincoln Center, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Zeitgeist, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet The Composer US Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, MAP fund from Rockefeller Foundation, The Kitchen, The Japan Society (New York), Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and many others.

Josef Woodard, The Los Angeles Times wrote, "(Living Tones) is new music/world music at its finest, beyond political correctness into the realm of the sublime, where words and cultural postures fall away."

Allan Kozinn, The New York Times wrote, "A gorgeously tactile piece that moved easily between an earthy folksiness and meditative refinement."

Kim won the Wolff Ebermann Prize at the International Theater Institute (Germany), 2021 New England Foundation for the Art' Rebecca Blunk Fund Award, and received Artist Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, which was created by John Cage and Jasper Johns. She received the artist residence fellowships for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy, Fulbright Specialist Program 2017 to Vietnam, 2015 Composers Now Creative Residencies at the Pocantico Center of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 2013 McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum, Asian Cultural Council to Japan and Indonesia, Djerassi Foundation in California, Freeman Artist-In-Residence at Cornell University, Composer-to-Composer Residency with John Cage and international composers in Telluride Institute, and Music Alive Composer in Residency with New Haven Symphony.

Kim was featured on PRI's The World and Voice of America in recognition of her works that lead to a new direction incorporating a profound Korean cultural heritage with a balance of Eastern and Western aesthetics. In 2005 Kim was featured on BBC The World/Global Hit radio program for her One Sky for String Chamber Orchestra and Electric Komungo, which was commissioned by the Great Mountain Music Festival for the 50th anniversary of Korean War memorial event at DMZ between North and South Korea and was broadcast on KBS-TV. Recent years Jin Hi Kim premiered new works, which are responses to two wars involving the American military in Asia: One Sky II (2018) for Orchestra dedicated to the reunification of Korea, performed by Wesleyan University Orchestra; and a choral piece, Child of War (2014), dedicated to Kim Phuc who is renown for "the girl in the picture" during the Vietnam War, performed by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Connecticut conducted by Carole Ann Maxwell.

Kim also focused on multimedia working with emerging interactive technology interfaced with Asian traditional instruments. In collaboration with sound designer Alex Noyes, Kim created 60 minutes Ghost Komungobot, an interdisciplinary, interactive synthises of komungobot (virtual robotic instrument) and visual media (Benton C Bainbridge). The work begins with 4th century mythology about the komungo. [A black crane (bird of sky) flew to the ancient instrument resulting in the name 'black zither' or komungo.] The storyline is true experiences that Jin Hi Kim has encountered with mystical birds appearances in recent years during her komungo tour in Java and Sulaweshi Islands in Indonesia and Native-American ancestral lands. The work-in-progress was presented at CultureHub, the Art & Technology Center at La MaMa for REFEST 2015 and co-produced by Harvestworks Digital Arts Center, NYC. The work is a reflection of emerging aspects of American culture including robots, artificial intelligence, and explorations of multidimensional space in the universe.

In 2021, with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts, Kim created and presented A Ritual for Covid-19, a community purification performance in memory of over 6 million pandemic deaths worldwide performed at five venues including the Fisher Center at Bard College and Crowell Hall in Wesleyan University. The work is a live interactive interdisciplinary performance on electric komungo with a range of photo images reflective of the coronavirus pandemic. These images from around the world tell a deeply moving story of death and survival as a 25-yards white cloth symbolically used in a shaman ritual is unfurled to release the spirit of overwhelming grief. A live streaming interdisciplinary music performance between Los Angeles, Seoul, and New York was developed in CultureHub and La MaMa’a Experiments in Digital Storytelling Program with CultureHub/NY creative team through the Korean Foundation (Link to Performance).

Kim's widely acclaimed 60 minutes Digital Buddha, for komungo/electric komungo with video mandala and digital images of extraordinary juxtapositions, fast cut swirling images of a deconstructed electric komungo, was performed at Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with 2014 Exhibition Silla; Korea's Golden Kingdom. The work has been presented at Korea Festival, Festival Dos Abrazos (Santiago de Compostela), Expo Cibao (Dominican Republic), Expo Zaragoza (Spain), Art & Ideas Festival (New Haven), Festival Salihara (Indonesia), Roulette (New York), Cornell University, Yale University, Stanford Pacific-Asia Music Festival and Michigan University. The work transforms the neurotic intensity of American life to daily Asian meditative practice.

"Cosmic Music Meditation, Jin Hi Kim presented a unique form of Buddhist Meditational Music.....as if their (audience) consciousness was carried into outer space." Tempo (Jakarta)

She has created an expansive body of experimental cross-cultural works that lead to a new direction incorporating Eastern mythology, aesthetics, and ritual with new emerging technology. Kim's Touching The Moons, a 70 minutes multi-media lunar ritual, in which the electric komungo, Indian tabla, Korean kagok singer, and Indian kathak dancer were processed live with a computer-controlled MIDI systems and sensors resulting in interactive digital animation, won the Wolff Ebermann Prize at the International Theater Institute. The work was commissioned by the Kitchen (New York) with workshops at MassMoca and performances at The Kitchen and the Kennedy Center. In the work, Kim challenges the duality of Asian mythology and American scientific exploration of the moons of Saturn, Mars, Uranus, Jupiter, Earth and Pluto.

"Her unique vision blends science fiction images, state-of-the-art technology, ancient mythology and timeless music and dance traditions. No other artist is doing work quite like this, and she does it with superb style." Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post

Kim's year-long project Sound Calendar of the Year 2018, a fusion of art and environmental sound ecology was accomplished with fund from Wesleyan University's College of the Environment. Kim has been developing her Asian Sound Revolution in collaboration with Min Xiao-Fen, Masayo Ishigure, Van Anh Vo, Gao Hong, Sussie Iberra and Samir Chetterjee. In celebration of Music From Japan's 40th anniversary, Kim was featured along with Wu Man and Mayumi Miyata for East Asian Vibrancy program presented at The Asia Society, Freer Gallery at Smithsonian Institute and Japan tour in 2015. She performed with Cosmic Ensemble at Venice Biennale 2013 for Joana Vasconcelos Floating Pavilion Opening Exhibition.

In Korea, Kim studied and practiced with masters from the National High School for Korean Traditional Music, which was established under the nation's single music institute, the prestigious National Gugak Center. She earned a BA degree in Korean Traditional Music at Seoul National University before coming to the United States. Subsequently, Kim studied with composer John Adams, Lou Harrison, and David Rosenboom, receiving an MFA at Mills College in California.

Crosscultural Compositions:
In 1986 She began to be recognized as a composer when she was commissioned by the Kronos Quarter for her work Linking. She was invited to the Composer-to-Composer Telluride residency with John Cage and other leading composers in 1989. She was featured composer for the Festival Nieuwe Muziek 1998 'Women in Avant-Garde' and Agate Slice was commissioned for Xenakis Ensemble (The Netherlands).

Kim’s compositions are developed based on her aesthetic of Living Tones- each tone in traditional Korean music must be perceived as alive, embodying its own individual shape, sound, texture, vibrato, glissando, expressive nuances and dynamics, as its philosophical mandate from Buddhism, a reverence for the ‘life’ of a tone, the color and nuance granted each articulation from Korean Shamanism.

Kim refers to this quality as 'Living Tones', a compositional method that she has developed over the past thirty years for working with Western contemporary musicians. Kim’s music is about challenging these organic shapes and the breath of time with Living Tones concept. Her work brings an expanded instrumental vocabulary to clasical Western performances with the inclusion of Korean instruments within the Western ensembles and herself as soloist.

Kim’s Living Tones CD features her signature bi-cultural compositions Nong Rock for string quartet and komungo, Tchong for flute and daegum, Piri Quartet for three piri performers oboe/English horn, and Yoeum for baritone voice and male kagok singer.

Jin Hi Kim is both composer and soloist for the following chamber music: Nong Rock commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center in 1992; Voices of Sigimse for Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival 1996 with Tan Dun conducting; Nori III for Percussion Quartet and Electric Komungo commissioned by New Haven Symphony Orchestra (2010) for Meet The Composer Music Alive; and Tilings (2013) for Either/Or Ensemble conducted by Richard Carrick, premiered at The Kitchen (NYC).

Kim was awarded the 2000-2001 American Composers Orchestra Composer Fellowship, and her commissioned Eternal Rock for Orchestra and komungo was premiered at Carnegie Hall with Kim as soloist and Dante Anzolini conducting. Subsequently she performed it with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Riverside Philharmonic, Seattle Creative Orchestra, KBS Symphony, and South Florid Symphony. Kim also has introduced Korean suspended and colorful barrel drums in the orchestra. Kim’s Eternal Rock II (2006) was commissioned and premiered by Boston Modern Orchestra Project and conducted by Gil Rose and Gerry Hemingway as soloist on barrel drums. Monk Dance (2007) commissioned and premiered by New Haven Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jong Ho Pak with Jin Hi Kim as soloist on barrel drums.

“(Linking) An essay in integration which suggested a Takemitsu-like ability to hover between eastern and western traditions.” Paul Griffiths, The Times (London)

“(Linking) The delicacy of her effects (and of the Kronos Quartet’s playing) were constantly riveting.” John Rockwell, The New York Times

“(Nong Rock) Kim juxtaposes and synthesizes the timbres, techniques and even styles of East and West in a way that is at once jarring and inevitable.” Dean Suzuki, Option Magazine

Steve Smith wrote in the New York Times, “In Tillings, Jin Hi Kim, an eloquent, eclectic advocate for the komungo, an ancient Korean fretted zither, vividly translated her instrument’s characteristic slurs and wobbles for a Western ensemble of woodwinds, strings, percussion and cimbalom."

“(Eternal Rock) moved through the orchestra like a curious outsider, wondering at the range of sounds it can make and using it as an extension of twangy vocabulary of solo komungo.”
Anne Midgette, The New York Times

“(Eternal Rock II) Some of the orchestral writing sounds like movie music, but the way that Kim extends the effect of the drums by additional percussionists ringed around the stage is striking.”
Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe

"Most exciting of the instrumental imports was the set of barrel drums used by Korean percussionist Jin Hi Kim in her own vibrant composition, Monk Dance. Kim's close, high-pitched harmonies spoke with an original voice, but her propulsive solos on drums and wooden blocks gradually took over, leaving the audience breathless."
David J. Baker, New Haven Register

Asian-Pacific Crosscultural Music and Mask Dance:
Her intercultural collaborations utilize ancient Asian traditions of drum, voice and mask dance with contemporary aesthetics and Western technology. Kim's 90 minutes cross-cultural Pan-Asian mask dance and music drama, Dragon Bond Rite (1997), featured musicians and dancers from India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Tuva and the U.S., and was commissioned by the Japan Society through funds from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation Multi Arts Production Fund, and presented at the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC) and the Festival of Asian Art in Hong Kong with preview at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and workshops at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy.

“...(Dragon Bond Rite) cut across barriers of language, culture and tradition, touch us at deep, irrational levels result in a work that speaks to our common humanity.”
Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post

Komungo Improvisations:
Kim’s new komungo compositions are imbued with meditative and vivid energy that makes it mesmerizing. Kim is a pioneer of evolution of the 4th century komungo into the world's only electric komungo with interactive MAX/MSP program. In 1989 Kim had an experimental electric komungo with metal strings without a sound board, which was plugged in sound processors. In 1998 Kim co-designed new one with Joseph Yanuziello that is built on the acoustic board and uses original komungo silk strings. This represents a radical departure from traditional instrument and became a precursor to subsequent instrument innovations throughout Asia. The new komungo sound is processed through a personal computer program in live that is triggered by MIDI foot pedal. Staying true to the nature of the instrument, her solo interweaves from old timeless mind to space-age blips.

In 1986 Kim was first discovered by avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser and has plunged into improvisation scene. In three decades of creative activity, she worked in improvisational forms with traditional music masters from Asia and Africa including Kongar-Ol Ondar, Shonosuke Okura, Akikazu Nakamura, Vikku Vinayakram, Abraham Adzenyah, and Mor Thiam. She has performed in a free improvisation context at many international festivals with prominent Western avant-garde improvisers including Elliott Sharp, Henry Kaiser, Bill Frisell, Derek Bailey, James Newton, Evan Parker, Pauline Oliveros, Joelle Leandre, Billy Bang, Joseph Celli, William Parker, Oliver Lake, Hans Reichel, Rudiger Carl, Peter Kowald, Reggie Workman, Jane Ira Bloom, Eugene Chadbourne, David Toop, Leroy Jenkins, Gerry Hemingway, Joe Morris, and Hamid Drake.

Soundtracks:
Kim's Sound Calendar of the Year 2018 a fusion of art and environmental sound ecology was sponsored by Wesleyan University's College of the Environment. In collaboration with artist David Chung at University of Michigan, Kim composed two soundtracks: Pyong Yang, a multimedia installation, and Koryo Saram, an hour long documentary film about Korean refugees from Russia to Kazakhstan, which was presented at Harvard University, Princeton University, Smithsonian Institution Freer Gallery of Art and the Sackler Gallery (Washington, DC) and international film festivals including San Paolo International Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival, Vancouver Asian Film Festival and European Film Festival. In collaboration with composer Joseph Celli, Soundprint: Asia, commissioned by New American Radio and premiered on the WDR in Germany was broadcast on the national radio networks of KBS/Korea, NPR/USA and WDR/Cologne.

Media Appearance:
Kim was featured for interviews and performances on Voice of America, PRI-The World, BBC-Global Hit, CPR-Insight, Korean National KBS TV, KBS Radio, MBC-TV, Arirang Global TV, YTN-National TV, PBS in New York; CPTV and WNPR in Connecticut; KPFA and KQED in San Francisco; RAI in Rome, Italy; ABC in Sydney, Australia; DRS in Switzerland; KCUR in Montreal; CBC-TV in Vancouver; VPRO in Holland, SinoVision (China) and many others.

Lecture Presentations:
Jin Hi Kim is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. Kim has given lectures about Korean music and her compositional concept ‘Living Tones’ at over 200 universities in the USA including Cornell University, Yale University, Duke University, Indiana University, Wellesley College, Peabody Conservatory, The New School, New England Conservatory, Dartmouth College, University of Minnesota, Stanford University, UC San Diego, and University of Michigan.

Cross-cultural Music Meditation Workshop:
During the New Haven Symphony Music Alive Composer in Residence (2009-2011), Kim developed a Cross-Cultural Music Mediation (CCMM) Workshop. CCMM introduces participants to meditative practices while providing opportunities to create together playing Asian percussion instruments that have an historic role in various Asian meditation practices. The project has been highly successful with proven benefits for multi-generational community including students, seniors, teachers, and clients at the CT Mental Health Center at Yale. She was 2013 McKnight Visiting Composer and 2014 Artist-In-Residence at Lou Harrison House to present CCMM workshops for the Minneapolis community and the community in Joshua Tree, California. She is a recipient of Arts Catalyze Placemaking - Arts Leadership grant from the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD)/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) that allows Kim to present her CCMM at New London Maritime Society, Intense Education Academy (Hartford), and CT Mental Health Center in New Haven in 2014-2015.