Composer Nubim
1. Origins and Transition
Nubim (real name: Soyoung Kim) is a Korean composer whose work bridges architecture and music, East and West, jazz and classical. Her distinctive musical language emerges from this interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Before turning to music, Nubim studied architecture and received the Korean Architecture Award. She worked as an architect for three years before dedicating herself fully to music. She later studied jazz piano and jazz composition, winning multiple international composition awards. In Korea, she taught composition and harmony at conservatories and founded an independent label through which she produced her own albums and collaborated with artists from a wide range of disciplines.
2. Education and Research in the Netherlands
Since 2015, Nubim has been based in the Netherlands, deepening her engagement with Western musical traditions. She holds master’s degrees in jazz and classical composition from institutions in both Korea and the Netherlands. These diverse academic and cultural experiences have shaped her into a unique and original compositional voice. Her research at Codarts focused on “The Musicalization of Architecture”, where she translated mathematical analyses of traditional Korean and Western modern architecture into music, guided by intuition. This exploration led to her album Chapel of Light (2020), the first in a series of works investigating the convergence of artistic disciplines and cultural traditions.
3. Crossroads and Compositional Voice
Her second release in this multicultural, cross-genre research series is Crossroads (2023), a string duo for violin and double bass. Supported by Sena and the Amarte Foundation, the album drew attention from respected record labels, cultural foundations, and orchestras for its bold, innovative approach. Crossroads was nominated for Best Global Contemporary Album at the 2025 Korean Music Awards, underscoring its artistic and cultural significance. Nubim composes contemporary classical music grounded in jazz harmony, with an emphasis on melody and accessibility. She writes for all types of ensembles, from solo works to orchestral settings, embracing both acoustic and electronic media.
4. Arranging and Performances
In addition to composition, she is passionate about arranging, treating it not as a secondary craft but as a creative discipline in itself. Her arrangements often evolve into entirely new versions of existing works, reimagined with fresh instrumentation, textures, and emotional narratives—blurring the line between arrangement and composition. Her works have been performed by a variety of ensembles: her orchestral piece was premiered by Ereprijs & Phion at the Andriessen Festival; her organ work by Hayo Boerema at Laurenskerk; and her electronic piece by the Doelen Ensemble. Her award-winning composition was featured at the 43rd ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and is permanently archived at New York University.
5. Current Projects and Artistic Vision
She leads the genre-blending Nubim Kim Group featuring two saxophones, marimba, piano, and cello. In June and August 2025, the group will premiere her new project Connectivity in Rotterdam and at a major Korean national festival, supported by Gemeente Rotterdam, Sena, NSRT, CJ Cultural Foundation, Adams Marimba, and others. At the core of her work lies a desire to explore the inner connections between different art forms and practices—using their underlying motifs, methods, and structures as compositional tools. In this ongoing artistic journey, Nubim continues to refine a unique compositional method developed through her recent albums, driven by a deep personal and professional pursuit of connectivity. Her life and music are a continuous navigation between East and West, architecture and composition. She constantly moves between classical tradition and jazz innovation.
Nubim (real name: Soyoung Kim) is a Korean composer whose work bridges architecture and music, East and West, jazz and classical. Her distinctive musical language emerges from this interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Before turning to music, Nubim studied architecture and received the Korean Architecture Award. She worked as an architect for three years before dedicating herself fully to music. She later studied jazz piano and jazz composition, winning multiple international composition awards. In Korea, she taught composition and harmony at conservatories and founded an independent label through which she produced her own albums and collaborated with artists from a wide range of disciplines.
2. Education and Research in the Netherlands
Since 2015, Nubim has been based in the Netherlands, deepening her engagement with Western musical traditions. She holds master’s degrees in jazz and classical composition from institutions in both Korea and the Netherlands. These diverse academic and cultural experiences have shaped her into a unique and original compositional voice. Her research at Codarts focused on “The Musicalization of Architecture”, where she translated mathematical analyses of traditional Korean and Western modern architecture into music, guided by intuition. This exploration led to her album Chapel of Light (2020), the first in a series of works investigating the convergence of artistic disciplines and cultural traditions.
3. Crossroads and Compositional Voice
Her second release in this multicultural, cross-genre research series is Crossroads (2023), a string duo for violin and double bass. Supported by Sena and the Amarte Foundation, the album drew attention from respected record labels, cultural foundations, and orchestras for its bold, innovative approach. Crossroads was nominated for Best Global Contemporary Album at the 2025 Korean Music Awards, underscoring its artistic and cultural significance. Nubim composes contemporary classical music grounded in jazz harmony, with an emphasis on melody and accessibility. She writes for all types of ensembles, from solo works to orchestral settings, embracing both acoustic and electronic media.
4. Arranging and Performances
In addition to composition, she is passionate about arranging, treating it not as a secondary craft but as a creative discipline in itself. Her arrangements often evolve into entirely new versions of existing works, reimagined with fresh instrumentation, textures, and emotional narratives—blurring the line between arrangement and composition. Her works have been performed by a variety of ensembles: her orchestral piece was premiered by Ereprijs & Phion at the Andriessen Festival; her organ work by Hayo Boerema at Laurenskerk; and her electronic piece by the Doelen Ensemble. Her award-winning composition was featured at the 43rd ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and is permanently archived at New York University.
5. Current Projects and Artistic Vision
She leads the genre-blending Nubim Kim Group featuring two saxophones, marimba, piano, and cello. In June and August 2025, the group will premiere her new project Connectivity in Rotterdam and at a major Korean national festival, supported by Gemeente Rotterdam, Sena, NSRT, CJ Cultural Foundation, Adams Marimba, and others. At the core of her work lies a desire to explore the inner connections between different art forms and practices—using their underlying motifs, methods, and structures as compositional tools. In this ongoing artistic journey, Nubim continues to refine a unique compositional method developed through her recent albums, driven by a deep personal and professional pursuit of connectivity. Her life and music are a continuous navigation between East and West, architecture and composition. She constantly moves between classical tradition and jazz innovation.
Quotes
"Riesentalent von Korea"
- Marcel Oberholzer (A&R, Switzerland)
“A charming mix of jazzy, classical and film music”
- Thierry Suchet (A&R, France)
"We appreciate the music you did send in and could tell that there is a lot of craftsmanship and mature musicianship one can hear through the compositions."
- The jury, the Erasmus Jazz Prize
"Nubim approaches Western harmony in the way that Western composers never could do, because she looks at it with foreign eyes." - Klaas de Vries (composer, honorary professor at Codarts, Netherlands)
"In the poetic sound world of Nubim colours influence her harmonies, shadows and shades shape her timbres, perspective and clear lines form timeless gestures while her music continues to propel forward. She clearly strives for musical clarity and depth, this clarity makes space for the light in her sound."
- Rene Uijlenhoet (composer, professor of composition and at Codarts, Netherlands)
"The recordings on her album are beautiful and the album has been critically acclaimed in the Korean press. Versatility in line-ups is great. Within the compositions a pleasant variety of different ideas and atmospheres, without losing coherence. Mastery of a wide range of writing techniques, especially those from after 1900: Nubim has an extraordinary harmonic insight from her jazz background that is well complemented by the use of electronics. Rhythmically her music is versatile. Pleasantly writes idiomatically for the various instruments."
- Wilbert Bulsink (composer, main subject teacher at ArtEZ Conservatory, Netherlands)
"Nubim owns a very accurate ear for melody and harmony, a pleasant idiomatic way of writing instruments and a good cohesion of the musical structure. The program of her album offers a nice change between fast and slow, contemplative and more active compositions, and a variety of line-ups including electronic music. The melodic idiom of Nubim's music certainly offers opportunities for this. Nubim is a hard-working and dedicated composer. Nubim appears to be perfectly capable of conveying the ideas in her work to musicians. She has gathered a group of dedicated players who perform her compositions with great dedication."
- Ivo van Emmerik (composer, professor at ArtEZ Conservatory, Netherlands)
Nubim is a composer with a clear musical perspective, and she knows how to capture it into the notes. The music drinks from classical and jazz traditions, but also from poetry and architecture, which shows personal, well-thought and developed compositions. When playing and listening having these elements in mind, everything makes sense and flows in a very unique way.
- Iván Nogueira Martínez (cellist, AKOM ensemble)
The jazzy tension and harmony among the instruments, to the point where you wonder if every single movement was really composed, gives a sense of time to the works of art that are the subject matter, and makes you look at each work in a new way. As a result, the paintings resonate three-dimensionally, the narrative of the novel becomes more dramatic, and the architecture reveals the dynamism inherent in continuity. This is the result of Nubim contemplating each work of art and interpreting its impressions through the thoughtful use of various musical materials.
- Choi Kyu-yong (music critic), August issue of the magazine ‘JAZZPEOPLE'
“At first glance, this duo performance sounds similar to the free improvisation of free jazz, but in fact, it is made up of a flow of melodies that were planned in advance by the composer. The contrast between the provocative violin and the contrabass that creates a subtle yet heavy tension, and even the reverberation of the live space, create a mutual musical synergy that sharply provokes our ears and emotions throughout, which is quite impressive. Composer Nubim, who uses the grammar of modern music that breaks away from the existing harmonic system and the unconventional sound expression of jazz as her creative framework, successfully creates a musical contrast by using the expressions of the performers that fit her concept as a stepping stone.”
- Kim Hee-jun, a member of the Korean Music Awards selection committee, commented on the nominee for the Best Global Contemporary Album, ‘Crossroads: Live in Amsterdam’
"Nubim is an exceptionally talented composer who writes beautiful compositions in her own unique way and with great expertise, in which influences from jazz, classical and world music effortlessly meet in special formations. She is also able to gather top musicians around her from the Netherlands and abroad to collaborate on her projects. Nubim is a dedicated and very talented composer of international class."
- Udo Pannekeet (Producer/Studio Technician, main subject teacher at Conservatory Haarlem, Netherlands)
"Nubim has found a special intermediate space between contemporary classical music, jazz and traditional Korean music in her work. She does this by writing contemporary compositions with Korean elements, which are then performed by jazz musicians. To this end, she has entered into successful collaborations with established Dutch musicians, resulting in various albums and performances. Festivals and stages for contemporary music are very much looking for these kinds of ‘genre-crossings’, Nubim is therefore an essential part of the further development of the Dutch music landscape. In addition, Nubim's work is financially supported and endorsed by institutions that represent a diverse multi-genre art community, such as the Amarte Fund and the Municipality of Rotterdam.
Nubim's fresh perspective not only stems from the way she draws from genres and cultural traditions, but also from her education and career as an architect. Her architectural way of thinking is reflected in the themes and methods with which she composes, which she was also able to explore thoroughly during her education at Codarts, among others. Think of graphic methods of arranging that are reminiscent of construction drawings, or themes such as the behavior of light in space. This places her in the company of experimental composer-architects such as Iannis Xenakis.
As a composer, I have great admiration for Nubim's enterprising attitude and way of making contact. Her work leads to tangible results, because she records her work in collaboration with Dutch audio engineers such as Udo Pannekeet and Sjors Segaar and releases it in EPs and albums. In doing so, she sets a fine example for Dutch composers in how you can continue after a performance, get a second life online and thus become accessible to many more people."
-Celia Swart (composer, main subject teacher at Conservatory Tilberg, Netherlands)
- Marcel Oberholzer (A&R, Switzerland)
“A charming mix of jazzy, classical and film music”
- Thierry Suchet (A&R, France)
"We appreciate the music you did send in and could tell that there is a lot of craftsmanship and mature musicianship one can hear through the compositions."
- The jury, the Erasmus Jazz Prize
"Nubim approaches Western harmony in the way that Western composers never could do, because she looks at it with foreign eyes." - Klaas de Vries (composer, honorary professor at Codarts, Netherlands)
"In the poetic sound world of Nubim colours influence her harmonies, shadows and shades shape her timbres, perspective and clear lines form timeless gestures while her music continues to propel forward. She clearly strives for musical clarity and depth, this clarity makes space for the light in her sound."
- Rene Uijlenhoet (composer, professor of composition and at Codarts, Netherlands)
"The recordings on her album are beautiful and the album has been critically acclaimed in the Korean press. Versatility in line-ups is great. Within the compositions a pleasant variety of different ideas and atmospheres, without losing coherence. Mastery of a wide range of writing techniques, especially those from after 1900: Nubim has an extraordinary harmonic insight from her jazz background that is well complemented by the use of electronics. Rhythmically her music is versatile. Pleasantly writes idiomatically for the various instruments."
- Wilbert Bulsink (composer, main subject teacher at ArtEZ Conservatory, Netherlands)
"Nubim owns a very accurate ear for melody and harmony, a pleasant idiomatic way of writing instruments and a good cohesion of the musical structure. The program of her album offers a nice change between fast and slow, contemplative and more active compositions, and a variety of line-ups including electronic music. The melodic idiom of Nubim's music certainly offers opportunities for this. Nubim is a hard-working and dedicated composer. Nubim appears to be perfectly capable of conveying the ideas in her work to musicians. She has gathered a group of dedicated players who perform her compositions with great dedication."
- Ivo van Emmerik (composer, professor at ArtEZ Conservatory, Netherlands)
Nubim is a composer with a clear musical perspective, and she knows how to capture it into the notes. The music drinks from classical and jazz traditions, but also from poetry and architecture, which shows personal, well-thought and developed compositions. When playing and listening having these elements in mind, everything makes sense and flows in a very unique way.
- Iván Nogueira Martínez (cellist, AKOM ensemble)
The jazzy tension and harmony among the instruments, to the point where you wonder if every single movement was really composed, gives a sense of time to the works of art that are the subject matter, and makes you look at each work in a new way. As a result, the paintings resonate three-dimensionally, the narrative of the novel becomes more dramatic, and the architecture reveals the dynamism inherent in continuity. This is the result of Nubim contemplating each work of art and interpreting its impressions through the thoughtful use of various musical materials.
- Choi Kyu-yong (music critic), August issue of the magazine ‘JAZZPEOPLE'
“At first glance, this duo performance sounds similar to the free improvisation of free jazz, but in fact, it is made up of a flow of melodies that were planned in advance by the composer. The contrast between the provocative violin and the contrabass that creates a subtle yet heavy tension, and even the reverberation of the live space, create a mutual musical synergy that sharply provokes our ears and emotions throughout, which is quite impressive. Composer Nubim, who uses the grammar of modern music that breaks away from the existing harmonic system and the unconventional sound expression of jazz as her creative framework, successfully creates a musical contrast by using the expressions of the performers that fit her concept as a stepping stone.”
- Kim Hee-jun, a member of the Korean Music Awards selection committee, commented on the nominee for the Best Global Contemporary Album, ‘Crossroads: Live in Amsterdam’
"Nubim is an exceptionally talented composer who writes beautiful compositions in her own unique way and with great expertise, in which influences from jazz, classical and world music effortlessly meet in special formations. She is also able to gather top musicians around her from the Netherlands and abroad to collaborate on her projects. Nubim is a dedicated and very talented composer of international class."
- Udo Pannekeet (Producer/Studio Technician, main subject teacher at Conservatory Haarlem, Netherlands)
"Nubim has found a special intermediate space between contemporary classical music, jazz and traditional Korean music in her work. She does this by writing contemporary compositions with Korean elements, which are then performed by jazz musicians. To this end, she has entered into successful collaborations with established Dutch musicians, resulting in various albums and performances. Festivals and stages for contemporary music are very much looking for these kinds of ‘genre-crossings’, Nubim is therefore an essential part of the further development of the Dutch music landscape. In addition, Nubim's work is financially supported and endorsed by institutions that represent a diverse multi-genre art community, such as the Amarte Fund and the Municipality of Rotterdam.
Nubim's fresh perspective not only stems from the way she draws from genres and cultural traditions, but also from her education and career as an architect. Her architectural way of thinking is reflected in the themes and methods with which she composes, which she was also able to explore thoroughly during her education at Codarts, among others. Think of graphic methods of arranging that are reminiscent of construction drawings, or themes such as the behavior of light in space. This places her in the company of experimental composer-architects such as Iannis Xenakis.
As a composer, I have great admiration for Nubim's enterprising attitude and way of making contact. Her work leads to tangible results, because she records her work in collaboration with Dutch audio engineers such as Udo Pannekeet and Sjors Segaar and releases it in EPs and albums. In doing so, she sets a fine example for Dutch composers in how you can continue after a performance, get a second life online and thus become accessible to many more people."
-Celia Swart (composer, main subject teacher at Conservatory Tilberg, Netherlands)
