A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Needed a Pianist: SFCM Stepped Up

If you're a Pulitzer Prize-winner in town for a lecture, and you need a pianist, you call SFCM.

More specifically, if you're novelist Barbara Kingsolver, and your latest novel, Partita, stars a former child prodigy pianist, you call SFCM's Piano Department Chair, Yoshikazu Nagai.

Jiin Kim onstage at the Sydney Goldstein Theater. (Credit: Robbie Jean)

Kingsolver was speaking at City Arts & Lectures in October to promote Partita and wanted to have a pianist play certain pieces mentioned in the book after she read the relevant sections to the audience. Nagai asked his Artist Diploma student Jiin Kim if she was up for the gig, which featured both the famed "Turkish March" movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No.11, K. 331 and Frederic Chopin's Prelude in B Minor, Op. 28, No. 6.

"I really like the idea that these pieces are connected to the main character's emotions," Kim says. "When she's dealing with whatever situation, she plays or mentions a piece that's reflecting her feelings. I know how they sound, and I know what I feel when I perform these pieces. So it's like,' Oh, she's feeling this way, but when I listen to this piece, I feel this way,' and there's a lot of creative things going on in my mind when I'm reading the book."

Barbara Kingsolver, Steven Winn, and Jiin Kim. (Credit: Robbie Jean)

Kingsolver wrote much of herself into Partita's protagonist, Livia: Both grew up in Appalachia, and "escaped" to Indiana to study classical piano. Livia is also dealing with an injury to her right hand, and Kingsolver deals with Dupuytren's contracture, a condition that causes the fingers on her left hand to curl inward, necessitating regular surgeries.

Steven Winn, Barbara Kingsolver, and Jiin Kim. (Credit: Robbie Jean)

Fortunately, Kim is injury-free and was excited to play Chopin, her favorite composer, and her appreciation for this particular prelude starts with its key. "I personally really like B minor pieces," Kim says. "[Chopin's] A minor, D minor [preludes], those are still kind of on a light side for me. But there's something deep and profound in the B minor. The texture itself is pretty simple, but the whole vibe is still rich. So there's this contrast, it's really fascinating to see how this simple texture can convey the deep emotion. I just love that. And the whole set is great: It's even better when you're hearing from the very beginning of the set to the end, rather than just playing one- y itself because it all has an arc."

Jiin Kim backstage with Barbara Kingsolver. (Credit: Robbie Jean)

Kim was invited to the vaunted Chopin International Piano Competition in 2025, an experience she said changed her perception of the composer.

"Being in Warsaw for the competition last year was a big, life-changing moment for me. I was very nervous of course, but it wasn't just that, it was that in Warsaw, everything is about Chopin, right down to the airport's name. So I went to the museum, I went to this or that place connected to him, and after that, I feel like I got closer to Chopin as a composer."

Kim continues, "Before I visited Warsaw, I was mostly thinking of Chopin as like, sweet and romantic, dolce, but then I also read his biography again. He had a lot of suffering in his life, and was also very emotional, and weak in health, too. So that kind of thing made me feel like, 'Okay, this is even deeper musically than what it looks like in the score.' I think I'm more calm in motion now, too: Before it felt more superficial, but I think I'm catching the feeling deep in my mind, and now that I don't need that unnecessary motion."

Learn more about studying piano at SFCM.