Bio
Sunhong Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ethnomusicology program and a student in the Women’s and Gender Studies certificate program and World Performance certificate program at the University of Michigan. Her doctoral project examines the aural meaning of instrumental sound in the performance practices by gugak (traditional Korean music)-based musicians in Seoul, South Korea. With her experience of performing piri (double-reed wind instrument)/ taepyeongso (conical sorna) within an institutionalized gugak community in Seoul for nine years, she investigates how the timbre (Seongeum) of gugaki (gugak instruments) interrelates with the process of cultivating professional musicians’ performing skills and the formation of musical canons (gugak) since the mid-20th century onward. Her research has been expanded to a transpacific musical flow between the US and the Republic of Korea since the mid-20th century onward.
Kim received the 21st Century Fellowship from the Society for Ethnomusicology to conduct her doctoral fieldwork in South Korea. She is currently a visiting scholar at Hallyu Center at SNU Asian Center and a junior fellow at Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University.
Education
M.A. in Musicology (Ethnomusicology), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2023
M.M. in Korean Music (piri/taepyeongso performance), Ewha Womans [sic] University, 2019
B.M. in Korean Music (piri/taepyeongso performance), Ewha Womans [sic] University, 2017