UMass Boston

On May 18, on a stage in Venezuela, Chaerin Kim stepped out to perform her eighth curtain call of the evening, as the audience gave a standing ovation. A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and conductor, she had just set a new world record by being the first soloist to play concertos on both harp and piano, accompanied by an orchestra, premiering her own composition in the same concert.

Kim, an associate lecturer in UMass Boston’s Department of Performing Arts, can play ten instruments in total, although the piano and harp are her favorites and the ones she feels most comfortable playing and teaching. She loves the intricacy of the harmonies that they can produce.

“It’s easier to express my feelings,” she says, “because they’re harmonic instruments, and I can play them with both my left and right hand, with direct contact of fingertips to instruments.”

This appreciation for complexity is also apparent in her compositions. Although she originally wrote her contemplative signature piece, Rendezvous, for the piano, she has also created versions of the song for other instruments, for a full orchestra, and for vocalists. Though the lyrics for Rendezvous were originally written in Korean, Kim has had the piece translated into 80 different languages to make the piece accessible to musicians from around the world.

For Kim, each new rendition of Rendezvous, with its individual nuance, is an expression of a deeply personal memory. For instance, the delicate, sentimental harp version evokes the nostalgia of watching fireworks and celebrating a cozy Christmas with her husband. The orchestral version, with its intertwining melodies of woodwinds and brass, embodies her thoughts on the cycle of life and death.

For her record-setting concert with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Venezuela, in a tribute to her parents, Kim paired the harp-and-orchestra Rendezvous with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Kim began learning this piece at 11; it was her mother’s favorite concerto.

Kim recalls that once, when she was little, her mother—a devout Christian and a lover of music herself—was praying and had a vision that her daughter was playing both piano and harp. With this year’s concert, “I just wanted to make her vision be real,” Kim said, noting that of all her music teachers, her mother was the best and most influential.

In fact, Kim feels grateful to her entire family—her parents, her brother, and her husband—for the support they’ve given over the years. She stresses that her parents encouraged her enthusiasm for music, but they never forced her to practice. They often asked her to stop and rest, even though she enjoyed practicing as well as performing. “Without their dedication and love for my music,” she says, “I could not be where I am now.” 

Since her record-setting performance in May, Kim has set another world record by performing the European premiere of Rendezvous with Harp and Orchestra in Estonia. This was the first time that a harp soloist played her own composition, with an orchestra, while conducting the orchestra at the same time. She enjoys the variety of instruments that she can direct at once: “It’s fun! It’s like if you go to a buffet.… Tasting all the different foods, like different instruments, is very exciting.”

At UMass Boston, Kim has taught both harp and piano since 2012, both in group classes and individually. She is eager to help students who love music; she credits them for constantly reinvigorating her passion for her art. “Here’s the thing: In teaching, you feel like you’re giving. But you’re getting more.… I learn so much from their love for music.”

She finds it incredibly rewarding to see her students make progress, both in their musical careers and their personal lives: Some of them have become faculty at universities themselves, have won international competitions, awards, and scholarships, and have built lives with their own families.

This fall, Kim is teaching again, after spending the summer traveling the world, performing, teaching, and judging music competitions. To date, she has previously been invited to be a judge 121 times, serving on the panels of more than 51 competitions, including the Grammy Awards.