Praised for her “exquisite refinement” and “vast interpretative range” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), Korean-American pianist Mi-Eun Kim has performed widely across the United States, Europe, and Asia, delighting audiences in the intimacy of recital halls and the energy of major concert stages.
As a soloist, she has appeared with the Boston Pops, Kansas City Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, and Chelsea Symphony. Among her recent projects is a performance of George Gershwin’s Concerto in F with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, drawn from the newly published critical edition by the University of Michigan Gershwin Initiative, presented in celebration of the work’s centennial. In recent seasons, she has devoted herself to performing the complete Beethoven sonata cycles—both solo and accompanied—in concerts across the U.S. and South Korea. In 2021, she released a recording of William Horne’s Sextet for Piano and Winds on the Blue Griffin label.
Her artistry has been recognized with prizes at competitions including the Liszt–Garrison International Piano Competition (Liszt Award), the Corpus Christi International Competition for Piano & Strings (Solo Prize), the International Institute for Young Musicians Competition, the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, and YoungArts. She has also appeared at major international festivals including Piano Summer at New Paltz, the Gijón International Piano Festival, Art of the Piano, PianoTexas, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and Kneisel Hall.
Mi-Eun is Lecturer in Music and Director of Keyboard Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she teaches piano through the Emerson/Harris Program for Private Study, coaches ensembles in the MIT Chamber Music Society, and mentors students across a wide range of musical initiatives. Through this work, she is committed to creating opportunities that connect musical training with the wider intellectual life of MIT students.
She co-leads Biomechanics of Piano Playing, a research project housed at MIT.nano’s Immersion Lab and supported by MIT’s Human Insight Collaborative. The project explores how movement science, musical expression, and pedagogy intersect in piano performance. It has been featured in MIT News and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and presented internationally, including Changwon National University, the University of Michigan, Southern Methodist University, the University of Nevada–Las Vegas, the KAIST-MIT Convergence Conference, the Music Teachers’ National Association National Conference, and the International Symposium on Performance Science. She has also organized residencies with Steinway Spirio and Yamaha Disklavier player pianos in collaboration with MIT’s Music Technology program.
A sought-after teacher, Mi-Eun has given masterclasses and residencies at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas, Gonzaga University, Sacramento State, and the University of South Florida. She is also on the teaching faculty of Brown University and has held visiting positions at Loyola University in New Orleans and Hope College. Each summer she is on faculty at Center Stage Strings and directs the Hansong Summer Music Festival in South Korea.
Mi-Eun earned her D.M.A., Specialist Degree, and M.M. in Piano Performance and Chamber Music from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in History from Columbia University through the Barnard-Columbia-Juilliard Exchange. Her teachers include Logan Skelton, Christopher Harding, Richard Cass, Seymour Lipkin, Stanislav Ioudenitch, and Yong-Hi Moon.