Eunbi Kim: It feels like a dream

Eunbi Kim, piano
Film by Xuan

Pianist Eunbi Kim explores childhood, family, and identity through multimedia programs that combine music, visual projections, and spoken text. She creates sonic memoirs that invite audiences to meditate on their past, present and future selves and how they all coexist. In it feels like a dream, created shortly after becoming a new mother, she asks the audience, “What are the dreams we carry? What are the dreams we pass on?” Working in close collaboration with cutting-edge composers and artists of different mediums, she creates projects that offer audiences the opportunity to tap into their unconscious pool of memories, dreams, and desires.

She writes,

“One of the most painful aspects of life has been the loss of childhood innocence, and I am always finding ways to reconcile this pain and access my childhood self which I believe is my truest self. The experiences of isolation felt through many selves—as a daughter, mother, child, woman, Korean, American, artist, pianist—drives me to try to understand how all these roles and identities come together. Is life but a dream? If our experiences are direct projections of our consciousness, I believe music and art can help guide us towards our highest selves. Working in collaboration with composers and artists of different mediums, I want to create space and community that tell stories that illuminate our shared humanity.”

“Her intersectional presentation of artistic expression, new music, identity, culture, and deep vulnerability was rare to witness.” Emil Kang

Biographies:

• Enbi Kim (medium bio)

• Enbi Kim (short bio)

Press:

• Preview in Gothamist

Outreach offerings:

• Outreach offerings

Saturn Years (Official Music Video):

Listen to Mother's Hand, Healing Hand (엄마손은 약손):

translations 
Mother's Hand, Healing Hand (엄마손은 약손)
By Pauchi Sasaki

Mom's hand is a medicine hand. 
Mom's hand is a medicine hand. 
Quickly, quickly get better. 
My Eunbi, beautiful Eunbi.

Listen to Saturn Years:

Listen to It Feels Like a Mountain, Chasing Me:

translations 

It Feels Like a Mountain, Chasing Me
By Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)

I,
I'm afraid that...
so strange because I only speak Korean to my parents.
My dad was 
one of his jobs he was 
he was 
you know, was
And then she's never talked to her brother since
And then she's never talked to her brother since
I don't know why he did that,
but he did come to my first birthday
and she got very upset.
So she, she told him to leave.
I don't think my father even knows.
He just knows that because
Then he's the one who told me only a few years ago,
and my mom has never talked about it.
In my first birthday party pictures
she doesn't look very happy and I think it's because
like, both of them are
like we would celebrate Christmas
and I would get Christmas gifts so that 
next day at school I could say, I got this and that,
and the other kids got really like
piano lessons, very big birthday party 
so they would save a lot,
they would save money throughout the year
so that I would get, I would have a big birthday party.
They didn't do anything for themselves.
So I had a really happy childhood because of them.
I would like a girl
Maybe no I don't.
I sometimes do not want to have.
Well, 
I guess
and Sung-Eun, 
Korean and English. 
So strange because
I only speak Korean to my parents.

Mom and dad really
loved mom very much

and they really
worked very hard and
with nothing for themselves, mom
and my dad and I were so close 
because he was such a gentle person
so it really broke my heart that he did that. 

They didn't have much money 
even though really
they really didn't have
and they worked extremely hard to give me a good life.