Soovin Kim to Join Faculty

NEC Announces Appointment of American Violinist Soovin Kim to the Strings Faculty

Winner of Paganini Competition, Recipient of Henryk Szeryng and Avery Fisher Career Grants, and Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, Kim Known for Breadth of Repertory

Active as Soloist, Chamber Musician, and Teacher

New England Conservatory will further burnish the international reputation of its outstanding string faculty with the addition of violinist Soovin Kim, beginning September 2014.  Known for the breadth of his musical activity, Kim, 37, is a regular soloist with orchestra, first violinist of the Johannes Quartet, Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, violinist with the Korea-based piano quartet M.I.K., and artist-in-residence at both Stony Brook University and Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. He also serves on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory.  He will leave the Stony Brook and Peabody posts in order to take up his new position with NEC.

Born in Iowa City, Iowa to South Korean parents, Kim spent much of his early childhood in Chicago, where he began violin lessons, studying initially in a Suzuki program. After the family moved to Plattsburgh, New York, he studied violin with Richard Roberts, Concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony. At ages 13 and 14, Kim himself served as concertmaster of the World Youth Orchestra at Michigan's National Music Camp at Interlochen. At 15, he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein, now occupant of the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at NEC.

Kim graduated in 1996 from the Curtis Institute and that same year, at age 20, he won the Paganini Competition in Genoa. The following year, he won the Henryk Szeryng Career Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award coming soon afterward.

The violinist has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic. He has given solo recitals at New York's Weill Hall, the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Ravinia, Tokyo's Casals Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center. And he is an active participant in the Marlboro Festival and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Among artists with whom he has worked are the Guarneri Quartet, pianist Jeremy Denk (a frequent recital partner with whom he has recorded two discs on the Azica Records label), the Jupiter String Quartet, Janos Starker, Lynn Harrell, and Musicians from Marlboro.

Along with his love of the classic repertory, Kim is passionate about performing new music. As first violinist of the Johannes Quartet, he commissioned new works by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Derek Bermel, and William Bolcom. Mr. Kim’s Korea-based piano quartet, M.I.K., recorded four commissioned works by Korean composers for its first album for Stomp/EMI. He also arranged for and performed the premiere of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer’s string trio in 2007.

For further information, check the NEC Website.
 
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
A cultural icon approaching its 150th anniversary in 2017, New England Conservatory (NEC) is recognized worldwide as a leader among music schools. Located in Boston, Massachusetts, on the Avenue of the Arts in the Fenway Cultural District, NEC offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. NEC alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC-trained musicians and faculty.

NEC is the oldest independent school of music in the United States. Founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee, an American music educator, choral conductor and organist, its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, NEC features training in classical, jazz, and Contemporary Improvisation. Graduate and post-graduate programs supplement these core disciplines with orchestral conducting and professional chamber music training. Additional programs, such as the Sistema Fellows, a professional training program for top postgraduate musicians and music educators that creates careers connected to music, youth, and social change, and Entrepreneurial Musicianship, a cutting-edge program integrating professional and personal skills development into the musical training of students to better develop the skills and knowledge needed to create one’s own musical opportunities, also enhance the NEC experience.

Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Programs and Partnerships Program, the Conservatory provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, and adults. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music, jazz, and Contemporary Improvisation. Currently more than 750 young artists from 46 states and 39 foreign countries attend NEC on the college level; 1,400 young students attend on the Preparatory level; and 325 adults participate in the Continuing Education program.

The only conservatory in the United States designated a National Historic Landmark, NEC presents more than 900 free concerts each year. Many of these take place in Jordan Hall (which shares National Historic Landmark status with the school), world-renowned for its superb acoustics and beautifully restored interior. In addition to Jordan Hall, more than a dozen performance spaces of various sizes and configurations are utilized to meet the requirements of the unique range of music performed at NEC, from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to big band jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre or Paramount Center in Boston, and a semi-staged performance in Jordan Hall. This past 2012-2013 season, the operas produced were Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, and Rossini’s La Gazzetta.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of From the Top, a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.

Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Senior Communications Specialist
New England Conservatory
290 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
617-585-1143
Ellen.pfeifer@necmusic.edu