Composer Soomin Kim loves to explore intimacy and familiarity through her 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 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 at the 2022 Aspen Music Festival, 2019 Bowdoin International Music Festival, the 2018 Norfolk New Music Workshop, and the 2018 soundSCAPE Festival, among many. Her music has been performed by renowned artists such as percussionist Ji Su Jung, guitarist JIJI, and violinist Ariana Kim.
Soomin is also a graphic designer. From 2019 to 2022, she worked as an assistant graphic designer for the Communications Office at the Yale School of Music. In the summer of 2020, she was an intern for Design Brigade, an initiative by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson to connects design students to new spatial problems that have emerged in the era of COVID-19.
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.
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