Hyunchae Kim

Born in Korea 1984, Hyunchae Kim spent her childhood in Jinju, a small city in the southern part of the country where she began to learn gayageum. She moved to Seoul at the age of fifteen and entered the National Gugak High School where she started her professional training as a musician. 

Hyunchae Kim graduated from Seoul National University majoring in gayageum and finished her Masters and Doctorate degrees at Seoul National University, writing her dissertations on gayageum sanjo music. She won first prize in the traditional music competition held at the National Gugak Center in 2009 and the Presidential Prize in the Gurye Gayageum Competition in 2019. She has also been designated as Apprentice of Gayageum Sanjo & Byeongchang, National Intangile Cultural Asset. 

Hyunchae Kim was a member of the Korean music ensemble Jeong Ga Ak Hoe for seven years, performing both the traditional and contemporary repertoire. She encountered Na Hyo-shin while working on one of her pieces for traditional Korean instruments, and she premiered six new gayageum pieces by Na since 2010. She has also played several pieces of the Belgium composer Baudouin de Jaer, performing at the Klara Festival in 2008.

She recorded her first album “Kim Hyunchae Gayageum Sanjo : Choi Ok-sam Ryu” in 2010 and her second album "Hyunchae Kim Plays Music for Solo Kayageum by Hyo-shin Na" in 2021. After finishing her DMA, she published a book “History of Gayageum Sanjo Jinyanjo” analyzing more than twenty different gayageum sanjos recorded from the early to the late 20th century. 

She taught gayageum at Seoul National University in 2017-2022 and Korean music at Gachon University in 2016-2022. She moved to the United States in 2023, served as a Visiting Artist at Stanford, Augsburg and Indiana Universities, and worked as a Guest Artist and Lecturer at Northern Illinois University. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Korean Performing Arts Institute of Chicago (KPAC) where she teaches, performs and directs the SoriBeat youth ensemble.