The countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim was born in South Korea but grew up in Chicago. He studied at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the Royal Academy of Music in London and took master classes with such figures as Kiri Te Kanawa, Thomas Quasthoff, and Masaaki Suzuki. Having won many competitions, he began his international career in the 2014-15 season in Paris, where he appeared under the direction of Marc Minkowski as Prinz Orlofsky in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and as Oreste in Offenbach’s La belle Hélène. Since then he has also performed at the Schwetzingen Festival and the styriarte in Graz, as well as at various French and German opera companies. In the 2016-17 season, Kangmin Justin Kim has appeared in Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica at Cologne Opera and in Handel’s Parnasso in festa at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; in 2018 he will make his Glyndebourne Festival debut in Handel’s Giulio Cesare (conductor: William Christie).

April 2017