KIM, Yonghee

Yonghee Kim is a South Korean freelance composer and pianist. She studied composition at the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul and at the Berlin University of the Arts with Walter Zimmermann. Her awards and grants include the Composition Prize in Chamber Music at the Seoul Music Festival, the Auditorium Prize for Criticism (Korea), a DAAD scholarship, a CAA (Contemporary Arts Alliance Berlin) grant, the Berlin-Rheinsberger Composition Prize, and the Elsa Neumann Scholarship of the State of Berlin.

Her works have been performed at various festivals, including the Seoul Music Festival, Hwaum Music Festival (Korea), Crescendo Music Festival and Zoom-Focus at the Berlin University of the Arts, Rheinsberg Pentecost Workshop for New Music, Unheard Music BKA (Berlin), Young Korean Talents, Berlin Music Festival Isang Yun's 100th Birthday with Ensemble United Berlin, Modern Art Ensemble, Ensemble New Babylon, and others.
Yonghee Kim's music draws its content from music history, literature, or spiritual experiences, which are translated into music.

She describes her composing as the "condensation in a moment" of a personal aesthetic experience, or how that experience has been imprinted in her memory or thought space. From this emerges a moment in a musical scene, permeated by the accumulation of her personal musical experiences. For each piece, she develops its own inner structures and content as a result of responding to the external world. She is actively involved in various new projects, participating as both a composer and a musician. Her repertoire includes works of early and contemporary music, including her own compositions.
Her own works have been published by Verlag Neue Musik in Berlin. She has lived in Berlin since 2012.