Earl Kim was a Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

n-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Kim was born in Dinuba, California

Dinuba, California

Dinuba is a city in Tulare County, California, United States. The population was 21,453 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Visalia Metropolitan Statistical Area according to the United States Census Bureau...

, to immigrant Korean parents. He began piano studies at age ten and soon developed an interest in composition, studying in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 and Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

 with, among others, Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...

, and Roger Sessions

Roger Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...

. After serving in World War II as a combat intelligence officer, he accepted a teaching position at Princeton in 1952. In 1967 he left Princeton for Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, where he taught until his retirement in 1990. He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 78. He is known for his vocal and music theatre works, many of which use texts by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, and for his expressive, often tonal style.

His students include Peter Maxwell Davies

Peter Maxwell Davies

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...

, John Adams, David Del Tredici

David Del Tredici

David Del Tredici, born March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, is an American composer. According to Del Tredici's website, Aaron Copland said David Del Tredici "is that rare find among composers — a creator with a truly original gift...

, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was an innovative American composer whose interests spanned the worlds of jazz, dance, pop, film, television, and classical music.Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was Afro-American...

, Curt Cacioppo

Curt Cacioppo

Curtis Cacioppo is an American composer of contemporary classical music and pianist. He is of Sicilian ancestry on his father's side, and Anglo-Saxon ancestry on his mother's side....

, David Lewin

David Lewin

David Lewin was an American music theorist, music critic and composer. Called "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation" , he did his most influential theoretical work on the development of transformational theory, which involves the application of mathematical group theory to...

, Richard St. Clair

Richard St. Clair

Richard St. Clair is an American composer, pedagogue, and pianist.-Life History and Musical Career:Richard St. Clair, a noted American musician, is descended from both Franco-Scottish roots on his father's side, and Norwegian-Swedish roots on his mother's side...

, Doug Davis

Doug Davis

Douglas N. "Doug" Davis is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Chicago White Sox of Major League Baseball...

, John Thow

John Thow

John Holland Thow was an American music composer. Thow produced an extensive and diverse body of work comprising solo, chamber, vocal, choral, operatic and orchestral repertoire....

, Jan Swafford

Jan Swafford

Jan Swafford is an American composer and author who teaches composition, theory, and musicology at the Boston Conservatory and writing at Tufts University. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music...

 , Randall Woolf

Randall Woolf

Randall Woolf is an American composer known for his diverse contemporary works, and in particular for his works based on children's literature and collaborative work with youth organizations. He studied composition privately with David Del Tredici and Joseph Maneri, and at Harvard, where he earned...

, Donald Sur

Donald Sur

Donald Young Sur was a Korean-American composer and musicologist. Although he is best known for his large-scale oratorio, Slavery Documents, most of his works were composed for small chamber ensembles. Sur was born in Honolulu and moved with his family to Los Angeles after World War II...

, and Paul Salerni .