Hyelim Kim

Hyelim Kim is a composer, creator, academic and solo performer of the Korean daegeum flute. Her compositional style is shaped by her background in performance training and instrumental practice alongside her academic training as an ethnomusicologist. Conceptually, her work depicts dynamics within various binary dichotomies: traditional/contemporary, performer/composer, improvisation/composition, and Western/non-Western.

Hyelim studied at the National Gugak (Korean Traditional Music) High School and Seoul National University, focusing on perfecting the basics of the daegeum. Her exploration of how this tradition could be exploited in a different context led to her deciding to study abroad, first in Australia and then the UK. Since moving to the UK, Hyelim has actively used her traditional training working with a variety of performers from around the world, including in contemporary classical, jazz, improvisation, electroacoustics, and folk music. In her collaborations, she has embraced the musical cultures of her collaborators while also introducing them to the musical aesthetics, notation, and composition techniques of Korea.

As an ethnomusicologist, Hyelim’s main field of research is Practice Research, which analyses performances as academic objects. Her works focus on the processes involved in creating new music across cultural boundaries, with an emphasis on the adaptation and transformation of languages of sound, notation and gesture. It considers the fluid relationships between composers and performers and the processes of invention in traditional music through experimentation and improvisation.

After completing her PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of London, Hyelim is currently a visiting research fellow at Bath Spa University, with a monograph published by Routledge in 2022. Her album, Sensitive to Light, with two of the UK’s leading improvisers, Mark Sanders (drums) and John Edwards (double bass) was recorded and published by Strikes Records in February 2023.