Adrienne Kim is a pianist and educator who loves to flip over any label she comes across or inhabits.

 

Her career has been built by finding and creating connections as pianist, chamber musician, new-music specialist, educator of all ages and levels, department coordinator, teacher-trainer, union organizer and founder. The daughter of a Japanese-American pianist-mother and a Korean-American composer-father, her interest has always been in the ‘in-between’.

 

Recent projects include her solo program, Handiwork, which centers the work of Canadian composer Ann Southam and weaves it with music of Schubert, Shostakovich and Couperin while inviting the audience to knit, embroider or draw. The iterative processes in the music and in the handiwork create a communal experience pointing to the purifying ideals in the Korean dansaekhwa art movement and also seek to shine a light on the centuries of overlooked work often referred to as “women’s work”. 

 

As founder of the Wild Plums Recording Retreat, Adrienne created a retreat where musicians could work in teams and experience the roles of performer, producer and videographer at the Guilford Sound Recording Studio in Vermont. The musicians were also invited to take part in sessions with meditation, watercolor and movement-based bodywork highlighting the integration of all the systems that work together to create any whole artist or artistic offering. 

 

As an educator, Adrienne has made it a point to teach pianists of all ages and all levels with the deep belief that for teaching to become an art means that we have to develop as many tools as possible to reach everyone wherever they are. She is currently on faculty at Mannes College of Music at The New School, where she teaches Collaborative Skills and was Coordinator of Secondary Piano for 12 years where she served as teacher-trainer and mentor for graduate Teaching Fellows. She is also on faculty at Manhattan School of Music Precollege, where she has a thriving studio, and in addition maintains a small private studio of adult students. For 20 years, she was on the faculty of the Kinhaven Summer Music School in Vermont. She was also a coach for the New York Youth Symphony’s chamber music program, was Affiliate Artist at Syracuse University and was on the Concert Artist Faculty at Kean University in New Jersey, and served on the Executive Board of the Piano Teachers' Congress of New York City. 

 

Adrienne has performed in New York's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Bargemusic, Boston's Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.'s Phillips Gallery and Ravinia's Rising Stars series in Chicago.  She has appeared as soloist with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra of Beijing, the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, the Portland Chamber Orchestra, the Centre Symphony and the Richmond Orchestra.  

 

Ms. Kim was a member of Chamber Music Society Two, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's two-year residency program for emerging young artists. She was the pianist of the Alcott Trio and a founding member of the New York Chamber Music Co-Op, a creative performance collaborative based in New York City. She performs regularly as a member of the Bronx Arts Ensemble and has performed with the New York Chamber Ensemble, Garden City Chamber Music Society, Lighthouse Chamber Players, Salt Bay Chamberfest, Carnegie Chamber Players, the Sherman Chamber Ensemble, the Society for New Music, the Skaneateles Festival, the Chiarina Chamber Players, and was the resident pianist of the Seal Bay Festival for American Chamber Music in Maine for 15 years. 

 

With the West End Chamber Ensemble, ensemble-in-residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, she participated in the National Endowment for the Arts/Chamber Music America Rural Residency. 

 

Her most recent recordings have been the solo and chamber music of Ilari Kaila, with the Aizuri Quartet and Izzy Lepanto-Gleicher as well as her celesta debut recording Philip Glass’ The Hours with pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn. She recorded the solo and chamber works of Daniel S. Godfrey with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on the Koch label, the violin and piano sonatas of Charles Ives with Lisa Tipton on Capstone Records, the sonatas of Niels Gade with violinist, Katie Wolfe on the Centaur label, and a CD with violinist Jorge Avila, featuring the sonatas of Granados, Turina and Rodrigo also released on Centaur.  She and Ms. Tipton also presented the “Made in America” series at Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall for many years.  

 

Adrienne studied with Menahem Pressler at Indiana University where she earned her Bachelor's degree and earned her Master's degree from Manhattan School of Music, where she was a student of Leon Fleisher.