Patrick Yim

Praised for his “deeply expressive, finely nuanced playing” (The Strad Magazine), “dazzling technique and passionate interpretations” (The Whole Note), and “vivid imagination” (Fanfare), Honolulu-born violinist Patrick Yim made his solo debut with the Honolulu Symphony, and has performed chamber music with Juilliard, Emerson, St. Lawrence, Pacifica, and Ying Quartet members, and musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Cleveland Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. He performed with the Cleveland Orchestra on tour in the USA and Europe, and with the Emerson Quartet violinists at Carnegie Hall. His recordings, including numerous world premieres, have been published by Albany, Naxos, Navona, New Focus, Ravello, and Acis. A strong advocate of contemporary compositions, Yim has commissioned 70 works, including a substantial body of work for violin with non-Western instruments. In 2024, Yim performed the world premiere of Bamboo Grove, a new unaccompanied violin work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long commissioned for him by the University of Notre Dame, at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. In 2026, he will give the premiere of Zhou Long’s first violin concerto. His discography includes Bamboo Grove (Pentatone, 2026), Chen Yi Works for Violin, Viola, and Piano (Naxos, 2026), Gobi Canticle (Orchid Classics, 2026), George Onslow: String Quintets, Vol. 5 (Naxos, 2026), One: New Music for Unaccompanied Violin (New Focus Recordings, 2024), New Waves (Albany Records, 2023), Digital Mist: Works for Violin and Piano (Naxos, 2022), and Memory (Navona, 2020). He earned his Bachelor of Music with Academic Honors and Master of Music degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University. His principal teachers were Philip Setzer, William Preucil, David Updegraff, Jennifer Frautschi, and Hagai Shaham. He previously taught at CIM, Hong Kong Baptist University, Interlochen, and Stony Brook. Yim is Assistant Professor of Violin in the Department of Music, Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and Faculty Fellow at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame.

 

He has presented lectures and masterclasses at the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, Duke University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor (endowed Virginia Martin Howard Stearns Lecture), University of Hong Kong, University of Iowa, Boston University, Vanderbilt University, Royal Academy of Music (Aarhus), University of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Oklahoma, Western Illinois University, University of Louisville, Central Michigan University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Stetson University, Zhejiang Conservatory, Soochow University (Taiwan), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. He has served as an external examiner at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and has taught masterclasses and workshops in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Brazil, India, Tajikistan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China.