Jin Hi Kim Performance and Lecture November 5-6 

SALISBURY, MD--Under Jin Hi Kim’s elegant fingers, the fretted board of her komungo, a traditional Korean instrument originating in the fourth century, acts as a bridge joining Eastern Shaman-inspired meditative musings with Western avant-garde.  On Monday, November 5, at 7 p.m. in the University Gallery in Fulton Hall at Salisbury University, Kim, Korean-born composer, performer and multi-media director, unveils her distinct fusion of electronically enhanced folk music.  The following day, Tuesday, November 6, at 11 a.m. in the University Gallery, Kim also conducts a 90-minute lecture, sharing insights about her music and the evolutionary sound she pioneered.

The University Gallery was chosen for the site of the concert because of its current exhibit of works by Korean-American artists.  Admission to her concert and talk is free and the public is cordially invited.  

Kim’s musical styling, a product of cross-cultural training, was first shaped at the Seoul National University where she majored in traditional music and later during a 10-year study at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts.  She then brought her komungo, a silk string zither first used by male Confucian scholars in their mediations, to the United States where in 1985 she received a Master of Fine Arts in composition/electronic music at Mills College, CA.  She characterizes her musical journey and compositional theory as “Living Tones,” a concept that she has developed over the last 20 years.   Kim believes each tone is alive and embodies its own shape, sound and sub-text, which are deeply rooted in Korean traditional music.

In a 2000 review of Kim’s multimedia Dong Dong Touching the Moons, the New York Times said, “With her electric komungo, she floated sustained tones and rudimentary melodies or plucked twangs suggesting a jaw-harp or hinted at the bent notes of the blues.  And with Alex Noyes’ digital processing, she turned Korean court-orchestra music into a haze of distant fanfares and remembered rites, from a time when the moon was a divine power.”

Awarded the 2000-2001 American Composers Orchestra Composer Fellowship, Kim’s “Eternal Rock” for komungo and orchestra premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2001.  Her compositions have also been presented at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (Washington D.C.), the Royal Festival Hall (London), the Lincoln Center Summer Festival and the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival.  Kim has created pieces for the world‘s only electric komungo, which she co-developed.  She has also collaborated with virtuosi of the Indian sitar, Japanese koto, African drum and Australian didgeridoo on her Komungo Around the World CD project and performed with some of the leading improvisers around the globe.  Josef Woodard of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “This is new music/world music at its finest, beyond political correctness … into the realm of the sublime, where words and cultural postures fall away.” 

Kim’s performance is sponsored by SU’s Department of Music and the Office of Cultural Affairs and Museum Programs in cooperation with the Korea Society.  For information call 410-543-6271or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.