Yeesun Kim,
cellist
 Cellist
Yeesun Kim is a member of the Borromeo String Quartet,
New England Conservatory's quartet-in-residence. Hailed by the
New York Times for her "focused intensity" and "remarkable"
performances, Kim enjoys worldwide acclaim as a soloist, chamber
musician and teacher. A founding member of the Borromeo String
Quartet, Kim has performed in over 20 countries, and in many of
the world's most illustrious concert halls and festivals.
Highlights of
her 2013–14 season include the world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s
String Quartet No. 7, "Désir", performances of the Bela
Bartók quartet cycle at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival and
in Boston at Jordan Hall, and appearances at the Orquesta
Sinfonica de Xalapa Festival in Mexico, the Bermuda Festival of
the Performing Arts, and the Terra di Siena Chamber Music
Festival in Tuscany. This season welcomes multiple performances
with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and special collaborations
with the Bill T. Jones Dance Company, the Chicago Chamber
Musicians, and also with cellist Antonio Lysy in a special
multimedia production, Te Amo, Argentina.
Recent highlights include a
two-week residency at Suntory Hall in Tokyo to perform the
complete Beethoven String Quartets, a cycle of Dvorák quartets
at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the complete
Bartók quartet cycle at the Curtis Institute of Music,
performances at the International MIMO Festival in Brazil, the
Morgan Library in New York, the Freer Gallery in Washington,
D.C., and in Nara, Japan; Beijing and Shanghai, China.
Kim has performed throughout
Europe and Asia with the Borromeo, in duo with violinist
Nicholas Kitchen, and as a soloist, including engagements with
the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Opera
Bastille in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, Suntory Hall and Casals Hall in Tokyo, the Saejong
Cultural Center in Seoul, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, the Library of
Congress and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
A much sought-after chamber
musician, she has been invited to perform at many festivals,
including Spoleto in the United States and Italy, Ravinia,
Marlboro, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Rockport, Music at Menlo, the
Prague Spring Festival, the Vancouver Chamber Music, the
Stavanger Festival in Norway, the Evian and Divonne Festivals in
France, and the Sejong Spring Festival in Korea.
As a member of the Borromeo
Quartet since its inception in 1989, Kim has had extensive
involvement with NPR's "Performance Today," the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center in New York, and the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. Her radio and television credits
also include "Live from Lincoln Center" and numerous appearances
on WGBH in Boston, Radio France, and NHK Radio and Television in
Japan. Recording credits include Native Informant,
featuring music of Mohammed Fairouz (2013), As it was, Is,
And will be, featuring music of Gunther Schuller (2011),
String Quartets by Robert Maggio (2011), Speak Like
the People, Write Like the King, featuring music by Steve
Mackey (2009), Soul Garden: The Chamber Music of Derek
Bermel (2002), Beethoven: Serioso (2002), and
Ravel: String Quartet and Sonata for Violin & Cello (1999).
Kim currently serves on the
faculty of New England Conservatory, in the cello and chamber
music departments, and teaches each summer at the Taos School of
Music in New Mexico. She has also taught at the McGill
International String Quartet Academy in Canada, the Suntory Hall
Fellows Academy in Japan, at the Seoul National University and
National University of Arts in Korea, and for the Foulger
Institute in New Jersey .
Kim is a graduate of the Curtis
Institute of Music, with advanced degrees from New England
Conservatory. Her teachers include Lawrence Lesser, David Soyer,
Peter Wiley, Hyungwon Chang, and Minja Hyun.
She plays a Peregrino Zanetto
cello, circa 1576, one of the oldest in the world.
B.A., Curtis Institute; M.M.,
Artist Diploma with Borromeo String Quartet, NEC. Violoncello
with David Soyer, Laurence Lesser. Also faculty of the NEC at
Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts.
The Borromeo String Quartet
http://www.borromeoquartet.org
Nicholas Kitchen, Violin
Kristopher Tong, Violin
Mai Motobuchi, Viola
Yeesun Kim, cello
Ensemble-in-Residence
at the New England Conservatory of Music
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Taos School of Music summer program
Winner of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant
Winner of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award (2001)
Winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award (1998)
Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's Performance Today
(1998-99)
Top Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian,
France (1990)
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News Quotes
"A remarkably accomplished string quartet, not simply for its high
technical polish and refined tone, but
more importantly for the searching musical insights it brings."
– The Chicago Tribune
"A musical experience of luminous beauty"
- The San Diego Reader
"Each of the greatest string quartets has redefined what the
possibilities of the medium are: through
the perfection of its ensemble and intonation, through its poise and its
passion, the Borromeos
are recreating the medium anew and we are lucky to be here to hear it."
- The Boston Globe
"The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of
classical music. The Borromeo players
have embraced it in their daily musical lives like no other major
chamber music group."
- New York Times
“It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that much of this book
has come from trying to
figure out what makes the Borromeo Quartet’s performances so
emotionally, intellectually,
and spiritually captivating.”
– from ‘Music and the Soul' by author Kurt
Leland
 Each
visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet
strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important
ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh
interpretations of the classical music canon and its championing of
works by 20th and 21st century composers, the ensemble has been hailed
for its"edge-of-the-seat performances," by the Boston Globe, which
called it"simply the best there is."
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Borromeo continues to be a
pioneer in its use of technology, and has the trailblazing distinction
of being the first string quartet to utilize laptop computers on the
concert stage. Reading music this way helps push artistic boundaries,
allowing the artists to perform solely from 4-part scores and composers’
manuscripts, a revealing and metamorphic experience which these
dedicated musicians now teach to students around the world. As the New
York Times noted,"The digital tide washing over society is lapping at
the shores of classical music. The Borromeo players have embraced it in
their daily musical lives like no other major chamber music group."
Moreover, the Quartet often leads discussions enhanced by projections of
handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audience the creative
process of the composer. And in 2003 the Borromeo became the first
classical ensemble to make its own live concert recordings and videos,
distributing them for many years to audiences through its Living
Archive. The next offering of Living Archive, a music learning web
portal, will be released next season.
Passionate educators, the Borromeos
encourage audiences of all ages to explore and listen to both
traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. The ensemble uses
multi-media tools such as video projection to share the often surprising
creative process behind some works, or to show graphically the elaborate
architecture behind others. This produces delightfully refreshing
viewpoints and has been a springboard for its acclaimed young people’s
programs. One such program is MATHEMUSICA which delves into the
numerical relationships that under-pin the sounds of music and show how
musical syntax mirrors natural forms. CLASSIC VIDEO uses one movement of
a quartet as the platform from which to teach computer drawing, video
editing, animation, musical form and production processes to create a
meaningful joining of music and visual art.
The quartet has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England
Conservatory and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for twenty-three
years; and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the
Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument
collections); the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Taos
School of Music. The ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as the 2014-15
Hittman Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore,
and its upcoming season includes substantial residencies at Colorado
State University in Fort Collins, Kansas University in Lawrence, and the
San Francisco Conservatory.
The
ensemble has been acclaimed for its presentation of the cycle of Bartok
String Quartets as well as its lecture"BARTOK: PATHS NOT TAKEN," both of
which give audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear a set of
rediscovered alternate movements Béla Bartók drafted for his six
Quartets. Describing a Bartok concert at the Curtis Institute, the
Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the quartet"performed at a high
standard that brought you so deeply into the music's inner workings that
you wondered if your brain could take it all in ... The music's mystery,
violence, and sorrow become absolutely inescapable."
Also noteworthy in the BSQ repertory are its dramatic discoveries within
the manuscripts of the Beethoven Quartets, and its performances of the
COMPLETE CYCLE; the BEETHOVEN DECATHALON (four concerts of Beethoven’s
last ten quartets, all with pre-concert lectures exploring his
manuscripts); and single BEETHOVEN TRYPTICH concerts (one concert
including three quartets). Its expansive repertoire also includes the
Shostakovich Cycle and those of Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Brahms, Schumann,
Schoenberg, Janacek, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and Gunther Schuller.
The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most
important composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage, Gyorgy
Ligeti, Steve Reich, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Mackey,
John Harbison, and Leon Kirchner, among many others; and has performed
on major concert stages across the globe, including appearances at
Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall, the
Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the
Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany, the Prague
Spring Festival and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The 2015-16 season includes performances in Switzerland, Japan, Korea
and China; the Bartók Cycle in Boston, San Francisco and at the Library
of Congress; and appearances at the Schubert Club in Minneapolis,
Amherst College, and Trinity Church Wall Street, to name only a few.
"Nothing less than masterful" (Cleveland.com), the Borromeo Quartet has
received numerous awards throughout its illustrious career, including
Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and Martin E. Segal Award,
and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. It was also a
recipient of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and top
prizes at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian,
France. [September 2015] |
