Biography:
Hi Kyung KIM received B.A. in composition from Seoul National University, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. As a recipient of the U.C. Berkeley’s George C. Ladd Prix de Paris, she worked at IRCAM and École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1988-1990. Her composition teachers were Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérard Grisey, and Sung-Jae Lee. Currently she is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and artistic director of Pacific Rim Music Festival.
Her honors/awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, Fulbright Scholar Award, Commissioning USA grant from Meet the Composer, Tanglewood Music Center, MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Cleveland Dodge Foundation, Korea Foundation, American Music Center, grants from the University of California InterCampus Arts Program for the Pacific Rim Music Festival and others.
Her recent commissions include pieces by Meet the Composer and Yo-Yo Ma and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Alexander String Quartet, Aki Takahashi & Rae Imamura, Ensemble Parallèle and UC Santa Cruz Chamber Singers among others. Her recent project trilogy “Rituels” for Korean Dancer/percussionist, Korean Ensemble and Western Ensemble was featured at the Other Minds Festival, Herbst Theatre, UC Arts & Lectures, Chamber Music Society of Sacramento, National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, Symposium for International Musicological Society in Melbourne, and the Festival/Conference of Inter-cultural creativity in Sydney, Australia. The piece, “Rituel III,” the last in the Rituel series was presented at the Pacific Rim Music Festival, Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in May 2005, which is in plan to receive it’s concert tour to New York, Washington DC, Korea and Europe.
Hi Kyung Kim is a composer of unusual originality, creating music of distinctive, highly artistic quality, music with character.
- Robert Commanday, San Francisco Classical Voice