American Composers Forum

Sunbin Kim
(Kevin Kim)
Born in Seoul, Korea

At the age of five, prior to receiving any musical training, he composed short pieces for piano. At age 8, in his first public recital, Sunbin premiered his twenty-six piano pieces and string chamber pieces at Opus Hall in Korea.

Sunbin was recognized 5 times at the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Competition. He won awards in 2002 and 2003, received honorable mention in 2004 and 2005, and was a finalist in 2000. He also won first place in the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts/Hartt School Community Division?s Young Composers Competition in 2004. This year, 2006, he won the North/South Consonance Award for his solo oboe suite, Aphorisms. The work will have its premiere this May at St. Peter?s Church in New York City. Sunbin?s piano work Elegy, had a premiere performance by Thomas Osuga in February 2006 at the Diller-Quaile School of Music in New York.

Sunbin is also a remarkable pianist. He won the Bradshaw-Buono International Piano Competition in 2005 which earned him a performance at Carnegie?s Weill Recital Hall. In 2004, he was the second place winner of the Nicolas Flagello Piano Competition. In the same year, Sunbin released a special solo piano CD for a fundraising event for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship held at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He has had numerous solo piano performances in New Jersey and New York metropolitan area.

For five years, Sunbin studied composition with Steven Sacco at the Mannes College of Music. Currently, he studies with Ira Taxin at the Juilliard School of Music?s Preparatory Division. During the past summer, he was the youngest student to participate in Boston University?s Tanglewood Institute Young Composers program.

His current projects include a Movement for Orchestra; a piece for concert band; Cycles, a series of etudes for piano; and a bassoon quartet.