Hangyul Kim started the violin at the age of nine under the tutelage of Professor Wendy Sharp of Yale University. She has been a member of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra since the 2018/2019 season. Prior to her position in Calgary, Kim was the acting Associate Concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for the 2014/2015 season, as well as the Concertmaster of the Opera in the Ozarks.
Kim has studied and performed at the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute in Washington DC; and at the Eastern Music Festival, where she was a member of the faculty orchestra under the direction of Maestro Gerard Schwarz. She was a two-year recipient of the orchestral fellowship at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, and has also performed overseas as a member of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in Germany and in the first violin section with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. While in Sydney, she had the privilege of performing with YouTube viral sensation TwoSet Violin.
Kim earned her doctorate from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where she studied with the late Ik-Hwan Bae and was the recipient of the Linda and Jack Gill scholarship, as well as the Dean’s Artistic Award. In addition to Bae, Kim has studied with other prizewinners of the 1985 Queen Elisabeth Competition, including Nai-Yuan Hu and Dene Olding. Her commitment to her studies has enabled her to earn special recognition of highest distinction on her doctoral exams, and has also earned her minors in music history and opera stage management.
Kim’s dissertation, titled Erasing the Color Line: The Violin Concerto of Samuel-Coleridge Taylor, traces the life and achievements of coloured composer Coleridge-Taylor and makes a case for how racial and financial privilege is still very much alive in today’s music world.
Outside of music, Kim is an avid writer and has been the recipient of several prizes, including publication in the literary magazine Labyrinth, the grand prize winner of the Asian American Heritage essay competition, and the grand prize winner of the Martin Luther King Jr. essay competition at Indiana University.
In her free time, she enjoys reading poems to her cat, Nico.