Film: Earl

Earl Kim is an American composer who was born into abject poverty. As a child, music transformed his life. He learned the keyboard from a church organist and later studied with a Los Angeles composer and teacher free of charge for seven years. He went on to study with some of the great modern composers of the era including Arnold Schoenberg. Earl was drafted in 1941 and served his country as a US Army Air Force Combat Intelligence Officer. He flew fifty feet above Nagasaki one day after the atom bomb was dropped. Earl returned home and stood up to McCarthyism refusing to sign the Loyalty Oath. He taught at Princeton for 15 years, and Harvard for 23 years. He made an album with the violinist Itzhak Perlman. Earl Kim died at the
age of 78 never fully achieving recognition for his brilliant work as a composer. Until now.

Earl Kim was also one of Scott Yoo's teachers at Harvard University. His piece Where Grief Slumbers will be performed on the chamber music concert later on Friday, July 26.