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Iris Stone, Violin and Soojin Kim, Piano
October 29, 2024
Iris Stone, Violin and Soojin Kim, Piano

Lera Auerbach/Dimitri Shostakovich: Selected Preludes

Claude Debussy: Sonata for Violin and Piano

Francis Poulenc: Sonata for Violin and Piano

A musician of broad artistic interests, German violinist Iris Stone resides in San Francisco where she is a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared as part of the Stone-Zimmermann violin-piano duo and performed and recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a member of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Iris performed in the great concert halls of Europe, Asia, and the United States. She has been a member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, has been Assistant Concertmaster of San Francisco’s Women’s Philharmonic, and Principal of the Monterey Symphony Orchestra.

Iris Stone first came to the United States in 1993 as a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship. Subsequently, she worked with violinist Donald Weilerstein, a founding member of the Cleveland Quartet, and was granted a long-term residency at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada.

For the past decade, Iris has also been seen as an actor performing with companies around the Bay Area such as California Shakespeare Theatre.

Soojin Kim, whose career spans three continents, is celebrated for her excellence as a soloist and for her sensitive work as a collaborative artist. Lavishly praised for her superb musicianship and exquisite artistry, she continues to captivate audiences internationally with profoundly beautiful and spirited performances. Her playing was

described as “mesmerizing, with indescribable beauty” by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Kukmin Ilbo in Korea wrote, “Soojin Kim plays with intelligence and incisive and utter honesty.” The Chosun Ilbo described her performances as “taking you beyond infectious energy with their sensitivity and sense of space.”

Born in South Korea, Soojin started playing the piano at the age of six, and violin at the age of nine. When she was 11, the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyade attended one of her concerts and subsequently invited her to perform throughout Thailand, beginning a relationship with that country that continues still today.

In her native Korea, she is regularly heard in recital throughout the country, has had her live performances broadcast on TBS Korean National TV, and has performed with the Busan Philharmonic, Daegu Symphony, and Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. In 2009, in recognition of her performances on both the violin and piano throughout Korea and Thailand, she was selected as one of the “Top 35 Most Promising and Influential People of Korea” by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

She began graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln where she was awarded highest honors upon graduation. She has since established a lively career in Europe performing recitals in the most illustrious halls in Cologne, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Aachen, Montepulciano, Milan, Rome, Paris, and Malaga. As a concerto soloist, she has performed with the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, Sinfonieorchester Münster. She has been broadcast live in Germany on Cologne WDR and DLF.

In 2019, while pursuing her doctoral degree in piano at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, on a collaborative assistantship, she joined the opera department faculty. Since then, she has also performed frequently across the US as a chamber musician, while remaining in high demand as an artist.