Patrick Yim
Assistant Professor of Violin
Education
Yim graduated with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M., M.M.) where he was a student of William Preucil and David Updegraff and was twice awarded the First Prize at the Milhaud Performance Prize Competition. At CIM, he studied chamber music with the Cavani Quartet and Peter Salaff of the Cleveland Quartet. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University where he studied violin with Philip Setzer, Jennifer Frautschi, and Hagai Shaham, and chamber music with the Emerson Quartet.
Biography
Praised for his “deeply expressive, finely nuanced playing” (The Strad), “dazzling technique and passionate interpretations” (The Whole Note), and “superb performances” (Fanfare Magazine), Honolulu-born violinist Patrick T.S. Yim has performed on stages around the world, including Carnegie Hall and David Geffen Hall (New York), Seoul Arts Center, Harpa Concert Hall (Reykjavík), Hong Kong City Hall, Severance Hall (Cleveland), Orchestra Hall (Chicago), Teatro alla Scala (Milan), and the Musikverein (Vienna).
Yim made his solo debut with the Honolulu Symphony and in recent years has performed concerti of Bach, Brahms, Bruch, Lalo, Mozart, and Vivaldi. He has performed chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Emerson, St. Lawrence, Pacifica, Ying Quartets, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, principal players from the Shanghai Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic, and musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic.
Recent chamber music highlights include a performance in Carnegie Hall with members of the Emerson Quartet as part of the New Music for Strings Festival, a collaboration with world-renowned pipa virtuoso Wu Man in Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra led from the concertmaster chair, and a collaboration with Juilliard Quartet violinist Joel Smirnoff involving the premieres of two newly commissioned works.
In April 2024, Yim will perform the world premiere of Bamboo Grove, a new unaccompanied violin work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long, at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame. New Waves, which includes premiere recordings of works by Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Qu Xiao-song, was published by Albany Records on December 23, 2023. Digital Mist, a Naxos album of music by American composers George Tsontakis, Sebastian Currier, Nathan Currier, and Chen Yi, including three world premiere recordings, was released to critical acclaim in September 2022. His debut CD, Memory, released in 2020 on Navona Records features world premiere recordings of works by Chen Yi, Michael-Thomas Foumai, Austin Yip, Kai-Young Chan, and Yao Chen, and has been broadcast internationally. He commissioned and recorded two solo violin works by Angel Lam and Fung Lam for the Freespace Mixtape Vol. 3 – a project of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. He has also been featured on Hawaii Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, RTHK (Hong Kong), and Asia Plus Radio. He has also recorded for Ravello and Acis.
He performed in the violin section of The Cleveland Orchestra on tours to New York City, Chicago, Bloomington, Iowa City, Miami, and major cities in Europe, including Paris, Milan, Brussels, Luxembourg, Cologne, Munich, and Vienna. He has also performed as concertmaster of the Hong Kong String Orchestra, the Gustav Mahler Orchestra Hong Kong, and the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival Orchestra.
Yim has performed at international festivals in Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Poland, South Korea, and throughout the United States, including the Banff Music Residency, Tongyeong International Music Festival, Beijing Music Festival, Shanghai New Music Week, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Toronto Summer Music, Lincoln Center Festival, Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival (Germany), Euro Music Festival and Academy (Poland), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, New Music for Strings Festival (Denmark/Iceland/USA), Flatirons Chamber Music Festival (USA), Rushmore Music Festival (USA), Hunter International Music Festival (USA), Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, New Vision Arts Festival (HK), French May Arts Festival (HK), Hong Kong Arts Festival, and the Taiwan International Festival of Arts.
In his extensive work with contemporary music, Yim has commissioned more than 40 works and performed the works around the world at world-class museum galleries (Hong Kong Museum of History and the National Museum of Denmark), concert halls (Seoul Arts Center; Sheung Wan Civic Center and Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts in Hong Kong; Goethe Institut in Kolkata, India; Arts Rotunda at the American University of Sharjah, UAE; Bactria Cultural Centre in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Grusin Hall at the University of Colorado, Boulder), and as part of international music festivals, including the 2018 Seoul International Computer Music Festival, the 2018 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the 2019 Flatirons Chamber Music Festival, the 2019 Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival and the New Music for Strings Festival (Iceland). He has also performed with the Contemporary Chamber Players (New York) and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.
In collaboration with the Hong Kong Museum of History, Yim curated a series of performances related to the Silk Road that involved the premieres of newly commissioned works for solo violin. His performances have been generously supported by grants from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, S.C. Van Fonden, Ebb and Flow Arts, and the Hung Hin Shiu Charitable Foundation.
A core member of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Yim was Assistant Professor of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University from 2017-2021. He also taught violin and chamber music at Stony Brook University, the Cleveland Institute of Music Preparatory Department, the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, the Flatirons Chamber Music Festival, the Rushmore Music Festival, and the Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival.
He has presented lectures and masterclasses at the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, University of Michigan, 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.
Yim was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the United States Department of State for his “outstanding musical performance on May 4, 2019 in Dushanbe, which contributed directly to the development of diplomatic and cultural ties between the United States and Tajikistan.”
Yim graduated with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music (BM, MM) where he was a student of William Preucil and David Updegraff and was twice awarded the First Prize at the Milhaud Performance Prize Competition. At CIM, he studied chamber music with the Cavani Quartet and Peter Salaff of the Cleveland Quartet. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University where he studied violin with Philip Setzer, Jennifer Frautschi, and Hagai Shaham, and chamber music with the Emerson Quartet.
Yim is Assistant Professor of Violin in the Department of Music at the University of Notre Dame.