Soovin Kim

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (May 2008)

Soovin Kim ~ American Musician, violin (born 1976)

American violinist Soovin Kim was born in Iowa City, IA on 10 April 1976 to South Korean parents who had met and married in their native country then moved to the U.S. together. When Soovin was 2, any hopes he may have harbored to join his fellow Iowans on a certain path to hog farming were dashed on the rocks of reality as his family moved to Chicago. Two years later his brother Marvin was born. Though no member of Soovin’s family was involved in music (Mom’s a registered dietician, Dad’s a communications professor), young Soovin and his mom loved to listen to classical violin recordings at home. Soon Soovin asked for violin lessons, as had his buddy, Jennifer Koh and a number of his other friends around the same time. His wish came true when his parents enrolled him in a local Suzuki class. The diminutive Soovin distinguished himself not only for developing a rabid lust for the Twinkies that were served as post-class snacks but, more importantly, for taking to the violin like a duck to water. He thrived under the devoted tutelage of Suzuki instructor William Fuhrburg. Soovin was greatly inspired by Fuhrburg, with whom he studied from ages 6 to 9.

Soovin’s enthusiasms in grade school also extended to competitive swimming and especially chess, which he learned from his first-grade teacher, a chess maser. Soovin entertained the idea of striving to become a chess champion, but fate stepped in once again as the family moved to upstate New York in 1985. Away from his chess teacher, Soovin’s focus returned to the violin. He attended public schools while studying the violin privately, traveling to Montreal weekly to work with the concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony, Richard Roberts. At ages 13 and 14 Soovin himself served as concertmaster of the World Youth Orchestra at Michigan’s National Music Camp at Interlaken. Both summers Itzhak Perlman was soloist with the Orchestra, and it was during this time that Soovin decided he wanted to be a professional violinist.

At 15 Soovin was chosen by the prestigious Cleveland Institute of Music to enroll in their young artists program. He studied at the Institute four years with teachers Donald Weilerstein and David Cerone. Soovin spent his summers at Cerone’s legendary Encore School for Strings in Hudson, OH. The Encore School is recognized as the pre-eminent American summer school for serious string players; among the School’s students aside from Soovin were Hilary Hahn, Leila Josefowitz, Zuill Bailey and many others.

1995 was a pivotal time for Soovin Kim, who transferred from the Cleveland Institute to the Curtis Institute of Music that year. Curtis, located in a welcoming old mansion in Philadelphia, creates an intimate atmosphere which fosters a warm familial community among students and faculty which lasts a lifetime. Soovin’s teachers at Curtis were Jaime Laredo and Victor Danchenko. Soovin was well known at Curtis not only because he and first-year roommate and close friend Dennis Kim polished off 350 pounds of rice lovingly prepared in their very own rice cooker that year, but because in 1996, at the age of 20, Soovin went off to Genoa and came back the winner of the Paganini Competition. One of the most fiendishly difficult and highly regarded professional gauntlets in the classical music world, the Paganini Competition is a life-changing experience for the few who win it. The following year, when he also won the Henryk Szeryng Career Award, Soovin’s professional life began in earnest, with representation by managers on 3 continents.

Soovin spent his first summer at the Marlboro Festival just after he won the Paganini prize in 1996. Founded decades ago by Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch, Marlboro is intended to be a true retreat for the artists who are invited to participate. Unlike the harried pace of the concert season, time at Marlboro moves lazily, allowing players to study and reflect on the music they prepare for weekly concerts. “It’s summer camp for adults!”, reports Soovin, who now returns to Marlboro every other summer to see old friends and indulge in the pleasure of playing music without the pressure of his normal frantic schedule. Aside from its manifest musical benefits, Marlboro holds a special place in Soovin’s affections because it is where he met both his favorite performing and recording partner, pianist Jeremy Denk, and his wife Joanne.

By the time Soovin graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1999, he had launched his career and formed a plethora of enduring personal and musical friendships. He recently did a U.S. tour (octets of Mendelssohn and Bolcom; quartets of Salonen and Bermel) with the Guarneri Quartet and the Johannes Quartet (of which he is first violinist) - a tour which was particularly jolly because all eight players were Curtis alumni.

Soovin ultimately moved to New York, married Joanne in 2005, and now conducts an energetic international career from Gotham. He frequently appears in Korea, both as soloist and as a member of the piano quartet MIK, which performs both standard repertoire and newly-commissioned works. Another of his favorite things to do is tour with fellow winners of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, which he won in 2005. Sandwiched between concert dates and recording projects (his fifth CD, music of Fauré and Chausson recorded with Jeremy Denk and the Jupiter Quartet, will be released in mid-2008), Soovin loves to play golf, teach his students at SUNY Stony Brook, and prowl around New York with Joanne in search of great films and the perfect meal.