Imagine a petite Asian woman sitting on a low table covered in ornately patterned silk, playing an enormous guitar neck with a pencil.
That’s as close as one could come to describing what many students, faculty, and community members saw during Korean musician Jin Hi Kim’s performance 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11 in the art gallery of Hege Library.
Kim also gave a lecture on Korean music at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 10.
Jin Hi Kim is among the most respected komungo players in the world. She has played at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center, among many other prestigious venues.
The komungo is a six-stringed zither with sixteen frets that and originated in Korea in the fourth century, C.E.. The strings are made of wound silk, and the instrument is played with a stick of baby bamboo about the size of a pencil.
Terry Hammond, the director and curator of the college’s art gallery, co-arranged through the Freeman Asian Arts Association and the Korea Society to have Kim visit the college. The Freeman Asian Arts Association and the Korea Society are charitable organizations that help fund Korean and pan-Asian arts and humanities.
“I didn’t realize she was such a world-class performer when I booked her for the concert,” Hammond said.
Hammond said that Kim’s visit ties directly to the display in the art gallery by Korean artist Lee Chul Soo. “For every exhibition I organize for the Art Gallery, I try to schedule some related educational programming.”
Tim Lindeman, associate professor of music and chairman of the department of music, teaches a class in world music.
“I thought it was great, really interesting sounds. I thought it was interesting that she could get such gentle and such aggressive sounds so effectively from the instrument,” Lindeman said.
Kim is the first person in the world to create and play an electric komungo. She played her instrument and used MIDI technology very heavily during the second, electric half of her performance. The MIDI is controlled by a series of manual switches and foot pedals, then run into a laptop for processing and finally to a P.A.. system.
The MIDI effects were non-traditional and ranged from space-age blips and bleeps to jet-plane swoops and sweeps. Kim also used live sampling in her music, a technique that is gaining popularity in rock and electronica-influenced jazz.
Sophomore Dana Di Maio was impressed. “I didn’t even know what a komungo was going in there, and I was very impressed with the range of sounds she was able to create with the instrument,” Di Maio said. “It was worth missing the first few minutes of German class to hear electric komungo.”

For more information on Jin Hi Kim, log on to www.jinhikim.comor www.oomusic.com.