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School of Music

Yeon-Kyung Kim yeon
Faculty Assistant, Accompanying
Sallee 215
Email: Y-Kim9@wiu.edu

Pianist Yeon-Kyung Kim is from South Korea and enjoys diverse branches she can explore with her classical piano training. Currently, she is in the final phase of Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Her teachers include James Tocco at CCM, Emile Naoumoff at Indiana University, who was the last student of Nadia Boulanger, Christopher Harding at the University of Michigan, and Aviram Reichert at Seoul National University. She has been a scholarship recipient throughout her music education. Most recently, she was appointed as a staff pianist at °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²ÊÀúÊ·¼Ç¼.

Yeon-Kyung regularly performs as a solo pianist and a chamber musician. She performed at multiple venues at CCM, in Northern and Southern Indiana, Detroit Metropolitan area including Ann Arbor, and in Seoul, South Korea. During her study in Michigan, she featured at Max M. Fisher Hall in Detroit for the Beethoven Sonata Marathon of Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She also presented at masterclasses for John O’Conor, André Watts, Peter Takács, Norman Krieger, Sphinx Quartet, Warren Jones, and Jonathan Feldman.

As an avid chamber musician, Yeon-Kyung finds a true joy of intertwining the music and idea of different people on the same page. Also, as a true collaborator who listens and reacts, she has performed extensively both with instrumentalists and vocalists. She is a 1st prize winner in Chamber music at Seoul Art Concours, where she played as an initial member of Quartet Y. Yeon-Kyung also served as a rehearsal pianist at CCM Opera under the supervision of Marie-France Lefebvre and Kathy Kelly, where she performed William Bolcom’s Dinner At Eight in two piano version. Her coaches include Kenneth Griffths, Anne Epperson, and Amy Cheng, to name a few. She was invited to a residency in Centenary College in Louisiana to perform and work on Korean art songs with their voice student. She also collaborates with large ensembles. She frequently played with MUSE, a women’s choir in Cincinnati, and was invited to collaborate with the CCM Wind Symphony for three consecutive semesters as a soloist on Hindemith, Bernstein, and Messiaen, and a keyboardist on numerous works by non-European, female, and living composers.

Yeon-Kyung believes that classical music should come closer to people in a more active way, and classical music is relevant. She performed at numerous outreach concerts for Michigan community including Michigan Performance Outreach Workshop. In Cincinnati, she directed concerts where she brought new musicians of the conservatory and presented to the city audience to break the barrier. To better serve this mission, she founded a non-profit organization, Glow Music. More concerts that connect local young artists and the community members are being planned.

Yeon-Kyung is an experienced teacher in a group piano classroom and a private teaching studio. During her time at CCM Secondary Piano Department, not only has she taught multiple group piano classes and private lessons for music majors and non-music majors, she also created a new syllabus for an online course. Currently, she is maintaining a private teaching studio of young musicians. Her passion and curiosity in teaching led her to study piano pedagogy with Dr. Michelle Conda. Moreover, she presented her research on teaching Leonard Bernstein’s Anniversaries at national and regional conferences by Frances Clark Center (NCKP) and Music Teachers Association (OMTA, SWOMTA). She also presented at the MTNA National Conference as a CCM Collegiate Chapter. Most recently, her article on asynchronous teaching video was featured in American Music Teacher (Aug/Sep 2022), a peer-reviewed journal of MTNA.

Having realized the importance of educating young musicians as well-rounded artists, she spent three consecutive summers at Indiana University Piano Academy (IUPA) as a live-in counselor. At IUPA, she developed her perspective about piano camps and leadership by acting as a residential supervisor of students and other counselors, coaching students’ practice sessions, and observing countless masterclasses. She also spent a year in Winona Lake, Indiana, demonstrating her administrative skills at the MasterWorks Festival as a festival assistant and a publicity assistant.