FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT with Soovin Kim, Kenji Bunch & Monica Ohuchi
Chamber Music Northwest is excited to welcome you to Newberg’s Chehalem Cultural Center for a FREE concert by the outstanding trio of violinist Soovin Kim, violist Kenji Bunch, and pianist Monica Ohuchi!
Depending on where you live, make a trip of it or pop over to Newberg’s new La Joie Theatre at the Chehalem Cultural Center for a fun and family-friendly concert!
Official Media Sponsor:
Chehalem Cultural Center (Newberg)
Friday, 7/10 • 7:00 pm
Artists
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Kenji Bunch
Composer & Viola
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Kenji Bunch writes music that looks for commonalities between musical styles, for understandings that transcend cultural or generational barriers, and for empathic connections with his listeners. Drawing on vernacular musical traditions, an interest in highlighting historical injustices and inaccuracies, and techniques from his classical training, Bunch creates music with a unique personal vocabulary that appeals to performers, audiences, and critics alike. With his work frequently performed worldwide and recorded numerous times, Bunch considers his current mission the search for and celebration of shared emotional truths about the human experience from the profound to the absurd, to help facilitate connection and healing through entertainment, vulnerability, humor, and joy.
Mr. Bunch is widely recognized for performing his own groundbreaking works for viola. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the new music group Fear No Music and is deeply committed to music education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
- FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT with Soovin Kim, Kenji Bunch & Monica Ohuchi (currently selected)
- SPECIAL EVENT | NEW@NIGHT: “Lost Freedom: A Memory”
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Monica Ohuchi
Piano
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Monica Ohuchi’s “commanding pianism” (The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini), performing “with beauty, clarity and drive…[offering a] warmth…expressiveness [that’s] irresistible and deeply moving” (The Times Argus, Vermont) allows her an active international career as a piano soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. Her “scintillating” (The Arts Desk, United Kingdom, David Nice) playing, combined with “an overt virtuosity [and] deep sensitivity that makes her lines sing” (Rutland Herald, Vermont) has taken her around the globe, from Lincoln Center in New York City, to remote villages in Bulgaria, to concert halls across Japan.
A pianist “dutifully and gracefully” (San Francisco Classical Voice) attentive to musical depth and detail, Ohuchi is a frequent soloist with orchestras; recent engagements include the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Marin Symphony Orchestra. Locally in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, Ohuchi performs with internationally acclaimed artists of Chamber Music Northwest, is often broadcast on All Classical Radio, is pianist of the quartet The Thunder Egg Consort, and enjoys soloing with regional orchestras.
Ohuchi is the pianist and Executive Director of the new music ensemble, Fear No Music. She is the Director of Music Performance at Reed College, where she also teaches piano and chamber music. Ohuchi holds advanced degrees from the Juilliard School.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
- FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT with Soovin Kim, Kenji Bunch & Monica Ohuchi (currently selected)
- SPECIAL EVENT | NEW@NIGHT: “Lost Freedom: A Memory”
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Soovin Kim
2026 YAI Faculty, Violin & Artistic Director
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Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.
Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
- FREE Open Rehearsal: Dvořák “Dumky” Piano Trio
- FREE Open Rehearsal: Mozart Clarinet Quintet
- Folk Voices: Dvořák “Dumky” Trio
- NEW@NIGHT: Across the Americas
- FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT with Soovin Kim, Kenji Bunch & Monica Ohuchi (currently selected)
- Universal Harmony: Schumann Piano Quintet
- Timeless Classics: Mozart Clarinet Quintet & “Rhapsody in Blue”
- Timeless Classics: Mozart Clarinet Quintet & “Rhapsody in Blue”
