Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season.  When he was 20 years old Mr. Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition.  He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet.  Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices, and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works to be released in 2022.

Soovin Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont.  In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin.  The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an honorary doctorate upon him in 2015.  In 2020 he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became Artistic Directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon.  The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center awarded Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim the Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music for the more than 100 performances, lectures, interviews, and masterclasses they presented for online audiences around the world since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. 

Mr. Kim is a full-time violin faculty member at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and in July 2022 he will join the Yale School of Music as Visiting Professor in the Practice of Violin. He is an alumnus of the Curtis Institute of Music.