Hwan Hee Kim
Hwan Hee is studying composer Kuk Jin Kim and Kuk Jin’s creation of a classical ‘sound of Korea’.
Hwan Hee’s PhD research focuses on investigating and recording significant piano works by Korean composer Kuk Jin Kim (1930-2020) – who devoted himself in the second half of the 20th century to realising a ‘sound of Korea’.
Excitingly, through contact with Kuk Jin Kim’s daughter, Hwan Hee has been able to bring original scores of Kim’s music, with the composer’s annotations, out of South Korea for the first time to perform and record, many as world premieres. These premieres form part of the performance strand of Hwan Hee’s PhD study under the supervision of Dr. Adam Swayne and Dr. David Jones at the RNCM.
As a pianist, Hwan Hee has enjoyed strong practical and academic progression, studying over the last 10 years in a range of stimulating, high-quality international environments. Working with noted piano tutors such as Nita Quinto, Jourdann Petalver, László Baranyay, Rustam Shaykutdinov, and Dr. Adam Swayne, he has performed in public in the Philippines, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and the United Kingdom.
Hwan Hee has won several international piano competitions, including the XXVII International Festival ‘Musica Classica’ in Moscow and the XV Art Duo International Music Festival Piano Competition in Prague. He has also received awards from the OPUS 2021 Krakow International Music Competition, the Franz Schubert Konservatorium in Vienna, the Luigi Cerritelli Competition in Milan, and others across Hong Kong, California, Finland, and Georgia, as well as being a finalist in the Naples’ Nomea Competition.
Over the past year, Hwan Hee has made significant contributions to academic discourse through his presentations and lecture-recitals on “Kuk Jin Kim and His Piano Works: The Sound of Korea.” His work has been featured at events such as the 22nd Annual Plenary Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland at the University of Galway, and the 16th World Piano Conference, hosted by the World Piano Teacher Association (WPTA) in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Performance-wise, Hwan Hee has presented recitals across the UK featuring Kuk Jin Kim’s music, introducing his PhD research and Korean piano music to diverse audiences.
His PhD aims to reveal an entirely new body of classical piano music by Korean ethnomusicologist-composer Kuk Jin Kim. This music, inspired by Korean traditional music and folk elements, enriches the Western classical canon with an original Korean classical sound.
