Works performed by Earplay:

At the Edge of the Ocean
Breaking the Silence
EarBrush
Untamed Brush I

Hi Kyung Kim, described by the Washington Post as a master of Asian and Western genre-blending, is a composer whose work is noted for its creative unification of contemporary Western and traditional Korean musical vocabulary, philosophy, art forms, and performers. Kim received a B.A. from Seoul National University, and M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. At Berkeley she received the Ladd Prix de Paris, which enabled her to work at IRCAM and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1988-1990). Her teachers include Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérald Grisey and Sung-Jae Lee. Since 1992 she has been on the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is the director of the Pacific Rim Music Festival.

Among the honors Kim has received are an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, a Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA grant, an Arts Council Korea grant, and Fulbright Scholar awards, as well as grants from the University of California Inter-Campus Arts Program, the Asian Cultural Council and the Korea Foundation.

In the past two decades Kim has collaborated with number of Korean artists. These artists, internationally recognized for their contributions to Korean traditional music and art forms, have participated in several of Kim's recent compositions. Her projects have included three major multi-media works titled Rituel for Korean and Western ensembles and Korean dance. These productions were featured at several venues worldwide. A new collaborative and multi-disciplinary work, Thousand Gates for the Ensemble Rituel, was previewed at the Smithsonian Institution and is now in preparation for its full presentation in upcoming years. Recently, she completed several large new projects including the string quartet Han San for the Borromeo String Quartet and Isles of Light for the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. She also has enjoyed working on a series of solo works for several instruments to explore the possible realms of each instrument.

Hi Kyung Kim founded the Pacific Rim Music Festival at UC Santa Cruz in 1996. This festival has gained international recognition for bringing together both Eastern and Western performers and composers at the forefront of their fields, as well as artists and music from the Pacific Rim countries. Kim was a guest composer and a keynote speaker at the Korea Society of Woman Composers. She was a featured composer for the Hún Qiáo [Bridge of Souls] project Premiere Concert of Remembrance and Reconciliation, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota with guest artist Yo-Yo Ma. She was invited as a composer to represent the third generation composer at the Asia Society in New York for the Four Generations of Asian Composers project, and she was invited to the UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education as a keynote speaker and a composer. Currently she is invited by the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts as a Fulbright scholar working with traditional orchestras.