Mastering the art of bowing: Kimea national honer festival
Story by Lina Kim and Alicia Chung
Edited by Jacqueline Choe
Design by Helaine Lee
Edited by Jacqueline Choe
Design by Helaine Lee
Students at SIS are avid musicians, and for many years, they have been going to various schools and places to perform.
The KIMEA National Honor Festival is a very unique experience for the high schoolers to have an opportunity to escape from all the stress caused from grades and assignments. Students are able to perform with their peers as well as students from other international schools. National Honor Festival is where students from either High School Strings and/or High School Orchestra audition, and those who qualify practice and attend workshops with other international schools, including a conductor from overseas. SIS Strings Director and teacher Ms. Kim, says, “For the audition process, we have to choose the students who have performed the best in the auditions, which means their performance level has to be very advanced in intonation, vibrato, tone quality, and their techniques have to be all in an advanced level, so those will be the students who are chosen.” SIS junior, David Kim, was one of the students who qualified to go to the 2015 National Honor Festival. He explained in his interview that he enjoyed the NHF experience, as high school students were always pressured because of schoolwork, and he usually had no time to strengthen his musical abilities. However, through NHF, he was able to focus primarily on playing the violin and developing himself further as a musician. “Give it a shot!” David Kim advises students who would like to audition for NHF. Jiwon Chung, a freshman from SIS, is a cellist who went to NHF this year. She explains how it’s very important to follow the rules and directions for audition tapes. “Every little thing matters to your audition. Small things such as how to use your metronome and naming your files correctly, are all factors on whether you make it into NHF or not,” Jiwon offers. The 2015 KIMEA National Honor Festival was held at Seoul Foreign School. This year, the majority of students were from SIS. Ms. Kim and the students were exceedingly proud to represent our school to all the other international institutions. Since NHF is a large issue among students and faculty, it was great that so many of our peers were able to go and participate to show the other schools what great musicians we have here. |
35 High school students proudly representing Seoul International School at the 2015 Kimea National Honor Festival. (Photograph courtesy of Lina Kim)
The performance is the most exciting part of this event. Students have worked incredibly hard for this opportunity to perform with a conductor from overseas. (Photograph courtesy of Lina Kim)
David Kim (11) practices hard for National Honor Festival auditions! (Photograph by Lina Kim)
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