Composer and singer Soomin Kim enjoys discovering herself and the world deeper through music. Soomin received three Morton Gould Young Composer Awards from the ASCAP Foundation in 2019, 2020, and 2022 respectively with her works conjunctions, THE EIGHTH SONG, and star / ghost / mouth / sea. In 2024, Soomin was selected to have her music workshopped and performed as part of Breaking Barriers, an initiative of Ravinia Festival and New Music USA. In 2024, she won the University of Florida Call for Scores by Women Composers with her orchestral work star / ghost / mouth / sea. During the 2023-24 concert season, Soomin was also a Sounding Ground composer-in-residence with Zeitgeist, a Minnesota-based new music ensemble. In 2023, she was the guest artist at the annual Art Festival at NLCS Jeju. In 2022, her orchestration of Helen Hagan’s Piano Concerto in C minor was premiered by pianist and musicologist Samantha Ege and the Yale Philharmonia under direction of Peter Oundjian. In 2018, she was selected to write for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony as part of their Young & Emerging Composers Project. She was also the composer-in-residence with the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra during their 2017-18 concert season, for whom she wrote a piece titled The Blue Marble. Her work has been featured by Sydney Festival, Liquid Music, Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Norfolk New Music Workshop, and soundSCAPE Festival, among many. Her music has been performed by renowned artists such as pianist Lisa Moore, percussionist Ji Su Jung, guitarist JIJI, and violinist Ariana Kim.
Soomin holds a bachelor of music degree in composition from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek. She holds a master of music and a master of musical arts degrees in composition at Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Chris Theofanidis, and Han Lash. She is currently teaching music theory and composition at the Minnesota Youth Symphonies and the St. Paul Conservatory of Music. Also, she co-founded a new chamber music project based in the Twin Cities, Rattlebox. Soomin is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.