Great Lakes Outdoor Summit
Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute
Bringing Music Off the Page and Into the North Woods
With Young-Nam Kim, Artistic Director at Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute and students
The sounds of nature have, forever, inspired classical and chamber music. Join us during the Great Lakes Outdoor Summit lunch break for a very special presentation and performance from Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute (NLCMI) as we experience and appreciate the many parallels between a string quartet and a living ecosystem.
Young-Nam Kim, Artistic Director at NLCMI, will take the stage with some of his students and share the profound power in making music immersed in the natural beauty of the North Woods. Learn about NLCMI’s 10-day intense chamber music study summer program set in the pristine and breathtaking Boundary Waters.
About Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute
The Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute (NLCMI) offers a unique artistic experience of intense chamber music study for advanced high school through graduate school age violinists, violists, and cellists set in the pristine and breathtaking Boundary Waters.
Students experience 10-days of invigorating music making while also enjoying outdoor activities including hiking, canoeing, swimming, campfires, and sauna time, widening our sense of the world and how we approach the arts. Diving deep into every corner of a Mozart quintet, NLCMI brings an appreciation for each crease of a leaf, or the way water flows over rocks in a backcountry stream.
The Institute daily schedule starts and ends with everyone playing together in a self-conducted string orchestra and culminates in three public performances brought to the Cook, Virginia, and Twin Cities audiences.
About Young-Nam Kim
Artistic Director at Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute
Noted by the New York Times for “sparkling virtuosity, strong colors and intense lyricism,” violinist Young-Nam Kim has appeared widely in the United States and Europe in summer festivals including Marlboro, Colorado, Sion, Sienna and Tanglewoodwhere he received the Joseph Silverstein Prize. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and those of Seoul, Pyong-Yang, Alabama, Binghamton, Brockton, Columbus, Detroit, Lausanne (Switzerland), Rochester, Spokane, and Syracuse among others, and appeared widely inrecitals including Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center. In addition to the standard repertoire, Mr. Kim has premiered more than fifty works by important composers of today. He also served on the jury of many competitions including the LipizerInternational Violin Competition in Italy.
Mr. Kim, who soloed with the Seoul Philharmonic while still in his early teens, moved to the United States while still in high school and studied primarily with Louis Krasner in Syracuse and Boston. His other teachers include Felix Galimir in New York and ZinoFrancescatti in Switzerland.
For over a decade Mr. Kim was a faculty member and head of chamber and contemporary music activities at Gunther Schuller’s Festival at Sandpoint. He is also founder and director the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute/Festival held annually in August at Camp Vermilion near Cook, Minnesota.
From 1980 to 2018, Mr. Kim was on the faculty of University of Minnesota where co-directed the New Music Ensemble in addition to teaching his violin studio, and was named the University’s Distinguished McKnight Scholar in 1999. He received a Presidential Outstanding Community Service Award in 2000. Prior to coming to Minnesota, he was an Artist-in-Residence and a faculty member of Bowling State University in Ohio where he performed widely as a member of the Bowling Green String Quartet and in a duo with pianist-composer Paul Schoenfield.
In December 2001 Mr. Kim was honored as one of six and the only musician to be named “Artist of the Year” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Young-Nam Kim resides in St Paul with his wife, Ellen, and together are very proud parents of three young professionals.