Soo Yeon Kim

Praised for her musical maturity and masterful technique (Leipziger Volkszeitung), violinist Soo Yeon Kim is a dynamic violinist and educator empowering the audience through engaging performances and collaborations based in NY and NJ areas. As a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra player, she has appeared on concert stages, notably Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, and Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Lincoln Center, Stern Auditorium and Weill
Recital Hall at Carnegie, Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, Yamaha Hall at Yamaha Ginza in Japan, and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hall in Leipzig, Germany. As a soloist, Ms. Kim garnered both national and international recognitions from winning several competitions in her native country, South Korea, and in the United States as well as having featured in major music festivals in Europe. She won first prizes at Mae&Fletcher Young Artist Competition, Friday Woodmere Young Artist Competition, Busan National Philharmonic Orchestra String Competition, Korean University of Education Violin Competition, TBC Broadcast String Competition, Juilliard Pre-College Concerto Competition, and later advancing to the finals of Johansen International String Competition. Her recent winning of the Eastman Concerto Competition allowed her make her debut with the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Neil Varon in Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre. In addition, she has soloed with Korean Sinfonietta, Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, New Jersey High Mountain Symphony Orchestra, and City College of New York Orchestra. Kim has also been invited and featured as a young artist in major music festivals, notably the Leipzig Internationale Sommer-Musikakademie and Kronberg Academy festival in Germany, Holland Music Sessions in Netherlands, the Starling-Delay Symposium on Violin Studies at Juilliard, and American Academy of Conducting at Aspen Music Festival.

As a multi-faceted artist, Ms. Kim is an avid chamber musician, collaborating with the leading composers of her generation and appearing in masterclasses with eminent artists, including American String Quartet, Emerson String Quartet, Juilliard Quartet, Ying Quartet, Steven Doane, Mauricio Fuks, Joseph Kalistein, and Peter Serkin. She has worked closely with the New Juilliard Ensemble and Focus! Festival at Lincoln Center, premiering a number of contemporary chamber works by living composers around the world, including Andrew Ford and Aleksander Lasoń, which were live-streamed on New York’s Classical Radio Station, WQXR. Her premiere of Samuel Adler’s A Euphonious Quartet is now available on major digital platforms, including Spotify and iTunes.

A graduate of Juilliard with her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (2008-2014) under the tutelage of Stephen Clapp and Sylvia Rosenberg, and now pursuing a doctorate degree at Eastman, Ms. Kim has not only built her career as a performer, but has also maintained her passion for music education. In addition to attending as a full-scholarship student at Juilliard, she was awarded several teaching fellowships in Music Theory and Music History Departments, assisting professors in both undergraduate and graduate classes. As a recipient of Arts Enrichment Fellowship, Concert Fellowship, and Morse Teaching Artist Fellowship, Ms. Kim has served students from NYC neighborhood public as well as chartered schools, and community organizations, such as PS 11, George Jackson Academy, and City College Academy of the Arts, as a teaching artist. At Eastman, she held her own secondary violin teaching studio, teaching undergraduate students from University of Rochester. She is a former violin faculty at the Thurnauer School of Music, which is part of Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in NJ. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Violin and Viola at Houghton College in NY, where she is also overseeing the chamber music program.