Violinist Soovin Kim has performed with many of the major orchestras in the United States and abroad, presented recitals on the world’s most celebrated stages, and released recordings on the Koch Discover International, Delos, Azica Records, and Stomp/EMI (Korea) labels. He has worked and collaborated with such revered chamber musicians as Jeremy Denk and Mitsuko Uchida and for two decades was the first violinist in the Johannes String Quartet. Today, Kim is a member of the Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio with his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, and YSM faculty cellist Paul Watkins.

Kim won first prize at the 1996 Paganini International Violin Competition and has received the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. He received the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music.

Kim serves as Visiting Professor in the Practice of Violin at the Yale School of Music, where he teaches individual students, coaches chamber music ensembles, and presents a master class each semester. Kim previously served on the faculty of the New England Conservatory and the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He has also served as Lecturer/Artist-in-Residence and Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University and as an international scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He is the Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest and the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, which he founded, and maintains a relationship with the Marlboro Music Festival, with which he has performed on a dozen national tours over the course of nearly 15 years.

Kim earned his bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and studied before that at the Cleveland Institute of Music.