Biography

Kimmy Szeto is an accomplished performer, orchestrator and director of musical theater. He has also studied carillon, double bass, percussion and recorder. He performs extensively as a piano accompanist and a chamber musician, and his orchestrations and transcriptions have been performed throughout the country. Kimmy holds performance diplomas in piano and violin and a masters degree in music history.

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Kimmy has studied piano at the Yin Cheng Zong studio in New York City and with Niels Østbye at Columbia University. After his Weill Recital Hall solo debut in 1993, he has focused on accompaniment and chamber music. He has devoted equal attention to his violin studies, and has played with the Hong Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Doctors' Orchestra of New York, and the Reona Ito Chamber Orchestra, among others. From 2000 to 2004, he participated as both a violinist and a pianist in the Apple Hill Chamber Music Workshop, and has performed at Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, and the Italian Academy. He is currently on the faculty of Columbia University as a vocal accompanist.

Kimmy also has a strong reputation as an orchestrator. He has written orchestral arrangements of Chinese and Japanese folksongs for the Columbia Orchestra for Asian Music, and served as orchestrator for several musical theater productions. His chamber transcription of Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod, comissioned by the Argento Chamber Ensemble, was reviewed in The New York Times. Argento recently premiered his transcription of the Scherzo and Adagio from Schumann's Second Symphony at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Kimmy's work in the arts extends to conducting and music directing. He studied conducting with Lawrence Eisman at Queens College and George Rothman at Columbia University; as an undergraduate at Columbia, he directed the Columbia Orchestra for Asian Music. Since then, he has directed several musical theater productions, including the Off-Broadway premiere production of Gentelman's Bet (later renamed Academy) by John Mercurio, and Sondheim's Into the Woods and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Kimmy was also a builder, seamstress, and sound engineer for several university and off-Broadway theatrical productions.

In 2006, Kimmy joined the Argento New Music Project as general manager. Under his leadership, Argento experienced a dramatic increase in operating budget and performances. Kimmy also spearheaded the organization's internship program. Already a New York City phenonmenon, Argento became an internationally renowned ensemble during Kimmy's tenure.

Always a recreational as well as a professional musician, Kimmy is fascinated by the carillon and writes transcriptions for this instrument; he enjoys Chinese opera, and also plays the er-hu, a two-stringed Chinese instrument. He has a fondness for choral singing, has sung with the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel Choir in Chicago, and is now involved with the World Muse Ensemble in New York.