Jin Hi
Kim
She // Her // Hers
[ID: A black-and-white headshot of a woman with long dark hair, black-rimmed glasses, and a textured headband. She faces away from the camera, to the right of the image, with a soft smile. A single light source hits the left side of her face, creating a sharp contrast with the dark background. In the bottom right corner of the image she holds a butterfly with her right hand.]
Bridgeport, CT
2022 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the Barr Foundation.
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Jin Hi Kim, a composer and innovative komungo virtuoso, codesigned the world’s only electric komungo with custom computer programs. Kim’s work reflects the duality of her ancient Korean roots and contemporary American society, with interdisciplinary works merging Asian mythology and advanced Western technology.
She is known as a pioneer for introducing komungo into the American contemporary music scene and for extensive solo performances on the electric komungo in large-scale multimedia performance pieces such as Ghost Komungobot, Digital Buddha, and Touching the Moons. In 2021, GRAMMY.com described her as “a musical philosopher and radiator of electricity.”
Over the past three decades, Kim has developed a series of “Living Tones” compositions that she has performed as a soloist with the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Chamber music Society of Lincoln Center. Kim has performed her own compositions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art, the Asia Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere around the world.
Portrait photo by A. Prathap.
[ID: An old black and white photo. Jin Hi is seated with her komungo across her lap in the center. In the foreground, four other musicians are seated, playing violins and a viola.]
[ID: Color photograph of Jin Hi and other musicians performing on a stage. She is seated on a platform with her komungo. To her left is a guitarist, a person seated with a drum, and another person seated with a stringed instrument made from a gourd.]
[ID: Black and white photo. Jin Hi is seated with her komungo. A group of audience members are seated behind her.]