Violin Roman Kim.
"One of the most incredible playing I have heard since I was born!"
Ivry Gitlis
Roman Kim is one of the most controversial violinists of our time. The young Cologne-based virtuoso is known all over the planet for playing with prismatic glassed covering half of his face and held in high esteem by legends of violin-playing.
As a soloist, Kim is praised by the critique for the explosive energy of his sound, his incredible virtuosity, his flawless technique and the sheer beauty of his tone. Kim has expanded the technical boundaries of his instrument, in order to follow his extreme expectations on himself. Following the paths of Niccolò Paganini, he is capable of interpreting Bach’s “Air” with all its parts on his instrument — Kim’s version of Bach's "Air on a G String" brought him international recognition in 2011 and has been viewed over 700,000 times on YouTube, even before he started to play around the globe.
He was born in 11 October 1991 in Balkhash / Kazakhstan to a family with Tatar, Belarusian and Korean origins. He has begun study violin at age of 5. When Roman was 7 he took the first place in a Region Competition and a month later won Republic Competition in Almaty. In February 2000 he entered Central Special Music School attached to the Moscow State Conservatory in Moscow class of Honoured Art Worker of Russian Federation Turchaninova Galina and was a scholarship student of the Mstislav Rostropovich Foundation. He won the first International Russian Rotary Children’s Music Competition in 2002. He attended master classes with Maxim Vengerov, Midori Goto, Lewis Kaplan, Miriam Fried and Gidon Kremer.
In 2008, at the age of 16, Roman Kim was admitted to the Cologne University of Music, where he studied with Viktor Tretyakov. In 2012 he won the first prize of the 28th Valsesia Musica in Italy. As a winner of the Cologne International Music Competition (2011), he played with the WDR Radio Orchestra of Cologne. Kim plays an experimental violin by Alexander Hazin( 2015),
Kim specialised in violin concertos of the Romantic period and virtuoso works for the violin. Kim has studied the bow and finger techniques of the legendary violinist Paganini in depth, and like Paganini, has created new arrangements for various musical works. Kim has also stated that Jimi Hendrix is another source of inspiration for him.
The cooperation with the music publisher "Bärenreiter" finally brought a proud confirmation of value. The Bachs Air, arranged by Roman Kim, was published in April 2015. The demand was great and the first edition was sold out within a few months. In 2016 he won the Ivry Gitlis prize at the Festival Le Printemps du Violon in Paris.
His music is described as romantic, melodic and virtuosic and in his compositions, the artist discovers the boundless world of his instrument and brings many innovations to the sound possibilities of the violin. His paraphrases "I Brindisi" on Verdi's themes (published in 2013) strengthened his reputation as Paganini's "epigones". In April 2017 Roman Kim's "Three Romances" for violin and piano were published by "Bärenreiter".
As an innovator, he constantly develops new techniques to satisfy his creative ideas. He invented a new type of strings, which he uses in all his performances, and experiments on the use of the mentioned prismatic glasses, he invented in 2014. Since 2016, this device has been studied by scientists in Seoul (South Korea) and Neuwied (Germany), suggesting that it provokes a state of cerebral activity, sharpening the senses and enhancing self-control.