Kim Jin-Hi is highly acclaimed as both a komungo (a fourth century fretted
board zither) virtuoso and for her cross-cultural compositions. She has pioneered
a wide array of compositions for the komungo in combination which she has
performed with the Kronos Quartet, Xenakis Ensemble, and the Lincoln Center
Chamber Music Society. She has co-developed the world's only electric komungo
with Joseph Yanuziello. She also has co-created with Alex Noyes for an interactive
piece for komungo and the MIDI computer system. Kim has performed extensively
throughout the USA, Europe, Canada, South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand,
and Russia at many international festivals both as a soloist and with leading
improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, William Parker, James
Newton, Oliver Lake, Peter Kowald, Evan Parker, Joelle Leandre, Fredy Studer,
Elliott Sharp and Henry Kaiser. She also collaborated with vituosos of the
Indian sitar, Japanese koto, African drum and Australian didgeridoo on her
"Komungo Around the World" CD project.
She has developed a series of compositions, "Living Tones" --that each tone
is alive, embodying its own individual shape, sound and subtext--and that
have been presented at the Lincoln Center Festival, Kennedy Center (Washington,
DC), Juilliard School's Focus Festival '96, Carnegie Hall, Darmstadt Festival,
Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival,
Festival Nieuwe Muziek, Institute for Contemporary Art (London) and the Asian
Pacific Festival (New Zealand). Kim's widely acclaimed cross-cultural mask
dance music theater, "Dragon Bond Rite" (1997), featured artists from Korea,
Japan, India, Indonesia, Tuva and the U.S., and was commissioned by the Japan
Society through funds from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller
Foundation, and presented at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Kennedy
Center (Washington, DC), Japan Society (New York) and at City Hall for The
Festival of Asian Art in Hong Kong. Joseph McLellan of The Washington Post
wrote, "[these collaborations] cut across barriers of language, culture and
tradition, touch us at deep, irrational levels, and result in a work that
speaks to our common humanity."
Born in Korea in 1957, Kim earned a BA degree in Korean traditional music
at Seoul National University before coming to the US, and received an MFA
in electronic music/composition at Mills College, CA. Jin Hi Kim has studies
ten years of traditional music with National Living treasures at the National
Center for Korean traditional Performing Arts and with a noted ethnomusicologist
at Seoul National University.
She has given lectures about Korean music and her compositional concept, Living
Tones, at Hartwick College, Cornell University, Yale University, Boston Museum
of Fine Arts, California Institute of the Arts, John F. Kennedy University,
Cornish College, and many other universities and events in Japan, Korea and
Europe. She has presented extensive radio broadcasts throughout North America
including NPR, KPFA-FM, WNYC-FM, the Canadian Public Radio/TV stations and
in Korea, Japan, Australia and Europe.
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