A London College of Music for BMus (Hons) Music Performance course leader and lecturer has been working on her own public performances as well as a getting seed-feeding for an innovative spoken word mental health project from the University of West London.
Dr Annie Yim is a Hong Kong-born Canadian concert pianist and the founder of MusicArt which creates original multi-disciplinary artist-led performance projects.
Last week (27 January 2024), Ms Yim performed with the Chinese ensemble, Tangram at LSO St Luke’s, Barbican. The concert was entitled Nature Echo, described as an immersive journey and relationship between humans and the environment.
Ms Yim said: “I am interested in how other art forms such as literature and visual art inspire, or are inspired by, music and how to bring them together in a coherent way.”
Recently, Ms Kim recived funding from University of West London’s Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund 2024 for her ‘The Well Gardened Mind Music Project’. The project seeks to address mental health through nature sounds and spoken word with performance.
Ms Yim commented: “The seed for the project started to grow during the pandemic when I was in Canada and volunteered to work on an urban farm growing vegetables. Then when I came back to the UK, I got funding from Arts Council England to do some nature sound recordings in different locations.”
Inspiration for the project was helped by the book The Well Gardened Mind by Dr Sue Stuart-Smith, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and avid gardener.
The project also feature a new composition by British composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad and will include passages from the book read by Dr Stuart-Smith herself and the premiere will take place at the Presteigne Festival in Wales in August 2024.
For those who want to see Ms Yim performing before then, she will be appearing with her ensemble The Minerva Piano Trio at LCM’s Lunchtime Concert at 1pm on Wednesday 7 February in UWL’s Vestry Hall.
She added: “I love performing classical repertoire as much as contemporary and multidisciplinary music. At the Vestry Hall concert, we will play works by Stravinsky and Mendelssohn.”
 Music Performance course leader and lecturer has been working on her own public performances as well as a getting seed-feeding for an innovative spoken word mental health project.){kind=link}