Jonah Kim, award winning cellist in a project that won a Grammy, is currently working on a few albums that Karen Lile is producing at Skywalker sound in a busy concert career that involves many projects and travel across continents. Jonah and his wife Julia Row also sail with Karen Lile on the San Francisco Bay.
Music Biography
Jonah Kim is an artist of great charisma and originality. Kim’s beauty of tone is immediately distinguishable by its signature sweetness. He invites the listener in with “the cosy warmth of a well-loved cashmere sweater,” (Gramophone) then “dives into the music with courage underpinned by formidable technical prowess, with which he achieves a dazzling performance”. (All About the Arts)
Kim made his solo debut with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philadelphia Orchestra at 12 years of age, and has since captured the hearts of audiences around the world. Beyond the stage, his newest recording of the Kodaly Solo Sonata is being praised for “[capturing] the very elusiveness that gives the music its substance” (Gramophone) and “flawless delivery of its Herculean technical demands”. (The Strad)
As artist-in-residence at Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, Kim produced and performed a series of multidisciplinary programs he titled “Songs That Make Us Dance”. With original and traditional music, paintings, and dance, these programs are a powerful demonstration of how the arts bring communities together.
Kim is also in residence at The Barclay Theater in Orange County with Trio Barclay. Since their inception, they have commissioned a new work from a living composer for every concert they have performed on their home stage. They have also concertized across the United States and South Korea, where the Busan News called Kim, “a true genius”.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim taught himself cello watching VHS tapes of Pablo Casals. He was awarded full scholarship to The Juilliard School at seven. That year, Kim became penpals with Janos Starker who invited him to Bloomington. He would continue to travel to Indiana to study with Starker even throughout his career at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he enrolled at eleven. At Curtis, he was the first fellow to train with all of the instructors: Orlando Cole, David Soyer, Peter Wiley and Lynn Harrell. Kim defines a truly American school of cello by reconciling the Italian, German, Russian, Franco-Spanish and Hungarian lineages.
“One of the very finest American cellists, he brings out things that you possibly never realized were in [the music]. He has that indefinable ‘it’ (Art Music Lounge)”.
Kim makes his home in San Francisco with his wife, the respected and beloved American ballerina, Julia Rowe. Julia also enjoys sailing on the SF Bay with Jonah as guests of Karen Lile.