Kathy Kim, Piano

Biography

    Kathy Kim is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music ( B.M.) and the New England Conservatory( M.M.) where she studied with Nina Svetlanova and Gabriel Chodos respectively. She also studied at the Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado as a scholarship recipient under Aube Tzerko and Herbert Stessin. After a several year break from academia she spent a couple years as a DMA piano performance major at the University of Southern California Thornton. She returned to teaching. 

Born in the U.S. and raised in Southern California, Kathy began her studies informally with her pianist mother, a top graduate of Seoul National University. Her formal studies commenced at the relatively late age of 10. She studied with Los Angeles based concert artists including Eduardo Delgado, Daniel Pollack, and Mona Golabek. In her adolescence she won numerous regional competitions including a Young Musicians Foundation scholarship, 1st prize and her orchestral debut with the 1987 SYMF Concerto Competition orchestra, top prize for the 1990 Music Teachers Association of California State Solo Competition, and the grand prize for the instrumental division of the 1991 Los Angeles Music Center annual Spotlight Awards held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. She performed the Beethoven Third Concerto with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra as a winner of the 1989 Orange County Philharmonic Young Soioist auditions under the baton of Lucas Richman and was in a KTE-TV televised concert playing the Chopin Concerto in e minor with the Los Angeles Youth Symphony at the Wilshire-Ebell theater under conductor Dr. Won Mo Kim in 1992. She was a finalist in the piano division of the 1991 Seventeen Magazine National Concerto Competition and placed in the International Stravinsky Awards competition that same year. She has also been honored and chosen to participate in Masterclasses with Rebecca Penneys, Alexander Peskanov, Jeffrey Kahane, Moura Lympany, Menahem Pressler. Kathy has enjoyed accompanying and collaborating greatly and has worked with musicians from top vocal and instrumental studios. Kathy taught private piano lessons to a very wide variety of students for many years as a member of the Music Teachers Association of California. She took a long break from teaching and is now deeply focused on both solo and collaborative piano recording projects. In addition,  she is developing her skills in fine art and creative writing.  Kathy resides in Connecticut.