Multimedia Video Performance: "Digital Buddha"
Friday, January 31, 2014 at 7PM (Doors Open at 6PM)
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditoriumm at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
FREE with Museum admission.
Jin Hi Kim, komungo and electric komungo
Gerry Hemingway, drums
Benton-C Bainbridge, digital images
Joel Cadman, video mandala
"Digital Buddha" is a multimedia solo performance mixed with video. The komungo is a Korean fourth century fretted board zither. Jin Hi Kim's this new komungo compositions are imbued with meditative and vivid energy that makes it mesmerizing.
Jin Hi Kim introduced the komungo, an indigenous instrument from South Korea into the Western contemporary music scene. Kim co-designed the world's only electric komungo, bringing the instrument into the 21st Century. Her live interactive performance pieces mix the komungo with a MIDI computer system using MAX/MSP.
Kim is internationally acclaimed as an innovative komungo virtuoso and for her cross-cultural compositions. Jin Hi Kim is from South Korea. She trained as a classical player, steeped in tradition. Kim now composes and improvises on the komungo and the electric komungo.
Kim has composed pieces for chamber ensemble, orchestra, cross-cultural ensemble, multi-media and avant-garde jazz improvisations. Jin Hi Kim and Gerry Hemingway's have been collaborating since 2003.
Jin Hi Kim was featured on PRI's The World, Voice of America and BBC-Global Hit. She was awarded the 2013 McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum. She was Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with New Haven Symphony Orchestra from 2009 to 2011. Kim's compositions have been commissioned by Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Chamber Music Society for the Lincoln Center, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Xenakis Ensemble, Zeitgeist, The Kitchen and Japan Society. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition.
Kim has performed "Digital Buddha" at Korea Festival, Festival Dos Abrazos and Expo Zaragoza in Spain, Expo Cibao in the Dominican Republic, the Art & Ideas Festival in New Haven, Conn., the Festival Salihara in Indonesia and Roulette in New York City.
This event is in conjunction with the exhibition, Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom, on view through February 23, 2014. For more information, please visit www.metmuseum.org.