(gentle violin music)
- Like this?
- Is it unusual for you to see him on that side?
- Yeah, I was literally about to say,
I feel like I haven't seen you cut food in so long.
- Don't you have some homework to do.
(family laughing)
Here is a picture with my mom.
Gosh, I must be about nine or ten years old.
And this is at a political rally in South Carolina,
which is where we were living at the time.
I can't believe I still have this photo.
(gentle violin music begins)
My earliest memories of childhood are playing the violin.
When you have friends visit and then everybody gets together
and usually somebody can play a little piano
and I remember always playing the violin in those situations
at the age of three.
Even as like a, just a rank beginner.
(violin music)
- [Boy] David Kim is 12 years old.
He's rehearsing with his mother at their home
in Columbia, South Carolina.
- [David] She was on a mission.
She decided when I was in utero, I'm gonna have a son,
not knowing what the gender was gonna be of her baby,
and I'm gonna train that son to become
a world famous concert violinist.
Practicing two hours, three hours, five hours a day.
Never had to do a lick of homework.
She wanted me to get to that destination
sooner rather than later.
This is the famous music tent in Aspen
at the Aspen Music Festival,
where I would go for nine weeks every summer.
That was where I did a lot of growing up.
My mom would be calling the dorm, you know,
just throughout the day.
And even if I wasn't there, "Where were you?"
"Have you done your five hours?"
You know, just so demanding.
(violin music)
- [Boy] David's been playing the violin
since he was three years old.
Now he plays with symphony orchestras all over the country.
(violin music)
- When I was 14, I couldn't comprehend,
I didn't quite get it, but my mom stopped calling.
(somber music begins)
I'll never forget getting off the plane
and my mother, who was already tiny, had shrunken.
It might've been the day I left for Aspen that summer,
she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
(somber music continues)
Pretty soon I got the picture that she wasn't gonna make it.
On her death bed, she told my father,
"I just want him to be happy and healthy.
"And if he wants to quit the violin today, fine with me."
Those three years post Mom's death,
that was a dark time for me in many ways.
I spent a lot of summers kind of in a haze.
I just felt like, what else am I gonna do?
I can't even pass algebra.
How am I gonna go anywhere else?
So I auditioned for Juilliard, fully expecting to get in,
and I did.
At the age of 17, I was off to New York
and it was the beginning of the rest of my life.
(violin music)
- [Dorothy] When David played for me
the first time he came here, he was, I think,
eight years old.
I wanted to get some impression of what kind of child he was
and I ask him what he thought of music
and he thought for a while and then he looked at me
and he said, "Are you asking me whether this is Baroque
"or classical music?"
I think he's really very gifted, very gifted child.
- [David] Dorothy Delay was one of the great teachers
of the 20th century.
I remember how she just lifted my spirits.
Very rarely did she make you feel
anything less than wonderful.
- [Boy] It's so nice being with her
because she tells you just right out if you're wrong
and she takes your comments
and if she thinks that hers is right,
then she thinks over my idea
and then we both debate over which one we should take.
- [Dorothy] Good, very good.
- She said, "All right, you're now in college,"
"let's take the gloves off."
In a nice way.
And she said, "You know, honey, you've been kind of"
"wandering for a few years."
"How about if we make a game plan now,"
"like a kind of a goal, set a goal for you?"
The Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow
held once every four years was kind of like
the Olympics of music.
Let's make it a goal that you're gonna go
in six years, in 86.
And so I just kind of woke up.
Time to start doing what you were put on earth to do.
(lively orchestral music begins)
This is backstage right before the finals.
I was petrified, and excited, and exhilarated
all at the same time.
I somehow advanced through each round
and I was awarded the sixth prize
and I was the only American to win a prize that year.
- [Interviewer] And that's brought you
to different levels professionally and musically.
I would imagine now that you have that recognition
it would seem to me that you're probably more sought after,
even than you were before.
- Right, well, that's a, it's a real confidence builder
and it feels wonderful to be in demand.
I can't say I'm playing 200 concerts a year,
but then I don't think I'm ready for that yet.
I'm building my career up.
I'm getting quality dates, which is very gratifying
because I love playing in small towns
and I love playing for anybody.
I like playing for school kids,
but occasionally one needs to play a serious concert
and really get nervous and playing
with the Pittsburgh Symphony this year
that's a very exciting thing for me.
(violin music begins)
I have spent my entire life honing my craft.
I have had the best training money can buy.
What I thought would be the beginning,
the kind of coming to fruition of all these dreams
that I had had that everybody had told me were kind of,
"They are yours if you want them,"
"you're gonna be a star violinist."
I thought that big phone call from a big agent
or something was coming right around the corner.
That final jump never arrived.
Is this enough shredding, honey, for tacos?
- I think so.
- And do you think I should get rid of some of the liquid
first or just move it?
- Yeah.
- [David] Just put it in there?
- [Jane] Uh huh.
- [David] When I got back from Moscow,
I just taken up the game of golf
and I went to Ohio to meet my uncle to play golf.
We went straight from the airport
to the Ohio State golf courses.
And out walks this really tanned Korean American golfer
with like the Ohio State golf bag and Ohio State uniform.
Totally love at first sight.
And two years later, we were married.
Here's an album of my wife from her big golf career.
Ohio State Champion, when Jane won the amateur.
And then tons of score cards.
But shortly after that,
after she tried to become professional
because her father wanted his daughter to be on the LPGA,
she just burned out.
So she went and got her MBA at Columbia
and then she started working right away
for Pricewaterhouse and worked for them for many years.
I was living in New York, in Westchester County.
I was so naive.
And so fooling myself, you know, lying to all my friends.
Oh yeah, I just got back from tour.
Tour being, you know, playing one concert in the Midwest
in a small high school auditorium or something.
That's not tour.
My wife just working, working, working late.
She would just delicately say,
"Hey, what would be so bad about, you know
"maybe getting an orchestra job.
"How about a paycheck for once?"
[Laughs]
And I was always very insulted.
I absolutely resisted and looked the other way.
All of a sudden I was in my early thirties
which is ancient,
way past what I should have realized.
It's not gonna happen.
I'm not gonna be Itzhak Perlman or a Yo-Yo Ma
and get a job, you know, support your family.
And so the next morning Jane was making coffee
and I said, "Honey, I have an announcement to make,"
"I am going to join an orchestra."
And how relieved was she?
I remember she said, "It's about time."
[Laughs]
When I first arrived here in 1999,
this whole block was just a muddy hole in the ground.
And then it took, I think, three more years after that
to make it the home for the orchestra.
It's just a pleasure to come to work in this beautiful,
beautiful facility.
I like this perspective too, looking at it from the sky.
As I look back, my mom was intense.
She really loved music that much.
I just feel like I have reached a place in my career where
she couldn't even have dreamt that I would be at this level
as concert master of one of the great orchestras,
playing solos every year with the Philadelphia orchestra.
This is exactly what she wanted.
And in the end here we are.
Even 21 years later, I feel that sense of wonderment
and just like disbelief.
And I thought, "Wow, you're still nervous"
"about going to work."
That's a good thing.
- [Boy] I play because I know that I've come this far.
And I like it a lot now.
I kind of have a goal.
I don't know, to tour travel and make music for everybody.
(drum roll begins)
(lively orchestral music)
- That's great.
You know, God that was fun.
You know.
(audience applauding)