Fred Fox School of Music alumna Ji-Young Kim enthusiastically shares a lovely video of her daughter’s first virtual performance class. Olivia Minji Yang is four years old and started studying piano with her mother one year ago. Already immersed in the arts at this early age, Minji also enjoys playing violin, reading books, drawing and dancing. Ji-Young Kim earned Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Arizona (2005/2010). She resides in Tucson, where she maintains a thriving private studio.
A native of Seoul, South Korea, Ji-Young Kim began piano study at the age of six and three years later won her first national competition playing a Mozart piano sonata. While attending The Putney School in Vermont, she studied with Chonghyo Shin and placed first in the Vermont All-State Piano Competition. She earned her BM in Piano Performance as a merit scholarship student, studying with Catherine Kautsky and Michael Kim at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, where she performed as concerto soloist with the Conservatory Orchestra and was a prizewinner in the Wisconsin Music Teachers Collegiate Piano Competition. Ms. Kim has also studied in Germany with Florence Millet at the Hochschule fuer Musik Koeln (Abteilung Wuppertal) and has participated in the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Rocky Ridge Music Festival, where she appeared as concerto soloist, as well as in programs at the School for International Musical Arts in Canada, the New Millennium Piano Festival in Spain and the Summer Academy of Music in Cracow, Poland. She performs frequently as both soloist and collaborative pianist. She is one of the founding members of Trio Liebevoll, whose performances have been broadcast as part of Arizona Public Media’s Classical KUAT radio Community Concerts Series. As an active educator, Dr. Kim has taught at Lawrence Academy of Music and as an adjunct professor of group piano at the University of Arizona. She has been maintaining a thriving private studio and has served as president of Tucson Music Teachers’ Association. At the University of Arizona, Ji-Young completed her MM in 2005 under Paula Fan, and in 2010 she earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree, where her teachers had been John Steele Ritter, Tannis Gibson and Rex Woods.