Meet the only Michigan high school student joining the National Youth Orchestra this summer

ANN ARBOR, MI – Minji Kim heard about the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America when she was little.

“My mom found out about it first and she was like, ‘Oh, you have to do this in high school.’ This looks like so much fun, it would be great for you,” said Kim, 17, of Ann Arbor.

Now a student at Skyline High School, Kim is one of 103 teens headed to NYO–USA, a Carnegie-Hall-hosted program that takes elite high school musicians on a city tour across the world, this summer, and the only one from Michigan.

The musicians, ages 16 to 19, will spend several weeks rehearsing and participating in workshops and social activities at Purchase College of the State University of New York before performing at Carnegie Hall on August 5 and to embark on a tour of South America.

The orchestra will perform in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – places Kim has never been before.

“I can’t wait to be able to perform in all these new places and see these countries in person,” she said.

The audition process involved recording videos of herself performing and submitting a written essay. Kim had to learn new pieces for the audition, something she found fun but “a little difficult, because they were all new and some of them were composers I had never played before.”

“The only thing I could do was train and train a lot,” Kim said.

Kim is the type of talented musician the orchestra is looking for, Doug Beck, director of artistic training programs at Carnegie Hall, said in a statement.

“We build NYO-USA from the ground up every year because all former orchestra members have to re-audition,” Beck said. “We are attracted to musicians like Minji whose auditions demonstrate playing at a very high level as well as a musical voice that we believe will make a significant contribution to the orchestra.”

During the tour, the students will be conducted by Marin Alsop, the first woman to conduct a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria and Great Britain, and will be joined by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

“It sounds really exciting,” Kim said. “I’ve never played with a solo pianist before, so I’m looking forward to that.”

Kim started playing the violin at age 4 and says she is satisfied when she can get the sound she wants from her instrument.

“My main driving factors are ‘I want to create the sound I want,’” Kim said.

This summer, as she travels to New York and later South America, she said, she’s looking forward to “all of that.”

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