Guest Artist Mini-Recital | Young Kim, Horn

Horn player and educator Young Kim (formerly of the St. Louis Symphony) will present a mini-recital and discuss his journey as a musician. 

This School of Music event is free and open to the public. 

Artist Bio

Born in South Korea and raised in Hawaii, Young Kim was exposed to music at an early age. Starting the violin at four and piano at six, he still went onto study the trumpet and the flute before finally settling on the French horn in middle school. 

Since then, the horn has taken him all over the world from the Sydney Opera House to KKL Luzern in Switzerland. Under the tutelage of Eric Ruske, Young earned his Bachelor in Music Performance degree from Boston University. While in his undergraduate studies, he also spent a semester abroad at the Royal College of Music in London studying natural Horn with Susan Dent. William VerMeulen accepted him into the Rice University horn studio in 2011, and upon completing his Master’s, Young won the fourth horn position in the Sarasota Orchestra (FL). 

He has also performed as a guest musician with the Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Hawaii, Houston, Memphis, Naples, Omaha, San Antonio, and San Francisco Symphonies as well as joining the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for its Canadian tour. Summer of 2016 marked a special occasion as he got to perform for the first time in his home country with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2018, Young won an audition for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Assistant/Utility Horn position. In 2022, Young also appeared as guest principal for the Singapore Symphony and the Artosphere Festival Orchestras.

A passionate educator, Young started creating educational content for the Korean horn community in early 2019. These contents, marked #HornTip (#호른팁), are essays, translations of pedagogy materials, and YouTube videos that discuss a wide range of topics. Efforts continue not only to provide new contents but also to make English translations and subtitles for a global audience. 

In the fall of 2023, Young moved to the Twin Cities area to join his wife, Yi Zhao, who is currently in the Minnesota Orchestra's First Violin Section. He is enjoying a diverse career in both performance and education, and is seeking to find new ways to advocate for classical music in his community.