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photo by Hye-Jung Jang
Jihyun Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1988. Studying Composition with Shinuh Lee, she graduated early from Seoul National University with a Bachelor of Music as valedictorian and then earned a master’s degree in Composition. Later, she graduated with a Master of Music from Indiana University where she studied with Don Freund, Aaron Travers and PQ Phan. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Rice University, studying with Karim Al-Zand and Shih-Hui Chen.
Her composed pieces have been performed at the festivals in Korea such as the Korean Music Expo, the Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival, the Pann Music Festival, and the 2016 ISCM World Music Days. Her works have also been performed in the United States and Brazil, including the 2017 John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium, the 2017 ISCM New Music Miami Festival, the 2016 LaTEX Festival, the International Symposium of New Music at Curitiba, the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop, and the Midwest Composers Symposium. Additionally, she won the Libby Larsen Prize in the International Alliance for Women in Music 2015 Search for New Music Competition, the Merit Award in the 1st Lin Yao Ji International Competition for Composition in Hong-Kong, and second place in the Contemporary Music Society Competition for Composition in Korea.
about At Dawn:
At Dawn for orchestra portrays a silent village where church bells ring in the distance. For me, the two phenomena – light from the sun slowly brightening the village and the sound from the church bells slowly filling the air – look and sound similar, because these phenomena gradually change the environment. In this piece, the gradual shift from low light to brightness and meaningless noise to meaningful sound. In order to depict such imaginary scenery, I use the fundamental and the overtones from bell sounds.
listen to an excerpt of Consolation