NEWS, REVIEWS & FEATURES
Bawat pamagat, may kalakip na kwento ng karanasan ng apat na Filipino Canadians…kung saan mababasa ang kwento ng kanilang pagsisimulang-muli, mga hamon na hinarap, espasyong inangkin — di nangiming panghawakan ang kanilang pagkakakilanlan bilang Pilipino tungo sa tagumpay.
– OMNI News Filipino reportage on Liham, June 21, 2025
Rhea Santos (Vancouver) talks to producer Renee Fajardo and composer Juro Kim Feliz as she features the launch of Liham in a three-minute news segment (in Tagalog) on OMNI Television. Click the play button (video on top right) to watch the report.
Conceived during the early days of the pandemic and recently filmed for digital release, Liham offers a poetic and political reflection on identity, migration, injustice, and resilience…[Liham] is more than a performance, it’s a memory set to music, a protest disguised as poetry, and a love letter to those who live between cultures. It really reminds us that opera isn’t just a museum of the past, thankfully. It’s a living form, one that can hold the weight of migration, loss, survival, and joy.
– “Born in the Philippines. Sung in Canada. Felt Everywhere,” Inside Vancouver Opera, 2025
Liham is featured in a podcast episode of “Inside Vancouver Opera” feat. mezzo-soprano Renee Fajardo and baritone Danlie Acebuque as guests for Filipino Heritage Month. Listen to the podcast HERE. A podcast transcript is found HERE.
Die Resultate des 9. Wettbewerbs für akusmatische Musik Ars Electronica Forum Wallis sind bekannt…In die Ränge der Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2024 Concert Selection kamen insgesamt 23 Werke. Dazu kamen 18 weitere Stücke mit Special Mention.
Special Mention (in alphabetischer Reihenfolge)
…
Juro Kim Feliz, Kinalugarán (PHL)
…
– “Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2024,” Schweizer Musikzeitung, January 26, 2024.
The audio essay Kinalugarán was awarded a “Special Mention” / “Highly Commended” distinction alongside 17 other works at the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2024 (Switzerland). Read the press release at the Schweizer Musikzeitung HERE.
His music thrives in the sustained tension, like the kinetic energy emanating from the corners of a frame, the opposing forces holding up a house.
– “The Spatial Sonic Designs of Juro Kim Feliz,” Musicworks #141, 2022
Read the Musicworks feature article HERE.
Juro Kim Feliz’s “Hanggang Sa Takipsilim” exits the listen, and it’s a curious mashing of Jayson Palolan’s Phillippine indigenous instruments and Hannah Leah Guanlao’s narration that’s expressive, atypical and blips and bleeps strategically.
– Take Effect, 2022
Read the review HERE.
The final track, Hanggang Sa Takipsilim, by Juro Kim Feliz combines computer electronic music with indigenous instruments of the Philippines. The result is a work that is an interesting blend of new sounds and old sounds to create a new approach to contemporary art music.
– “TCO Audio Reviews: November 2022,” International Clarinet Association, 2022
Read the review of the whole album HERE.
Juro Kim Feliz in an interview with PARMA Recordings (October 2022).
Lauded by critics as “interesting and captivating” (Cinemusical), the MIND & MACHINE series from Ravello Records returns in its fourth installment with a fresh roster of today’s electro-acoustic composers, one of which being Juro Kim Feliz, who’s piece Hanggang sa Takipsilim highlights resilient voices respond in the face of oppression.
Read HERE.
New Music Concerts composer-in-residence announcement (December 2021).
Read HERE.
Artist of the Day interview feature with The Starlite Sessions (February 2021).
Read the interview HERE.
The synth-pop singer-songwriter gets authentic & animated in his latest adventure.
– “Grumpy Kitty Boy Soars With New Airplane Wings Video,” Tinnitist, 2020
Read the Tinnitist feature on Grumpy Kitty Boy HERE.
Juro Kim Feliz as Grumpy Kitty Boy in an interview with Canadian Beats, following the release of the debut single Airplane Wings (August 2020).
Read the interview HERE.
Kimmel Foundation’s announcement of Grumpy Kitty Boy partnership with fellow alumnx Yuna Kim (July 2020).
Read HERE.
Meanwhile, Juro Kim Feliz’s A Study in Exile, No. 4: Paagos is a complex and layered audio work that engages with themes of home, migration, displacement, surveillance, national militarization, and the imposition of borders. Abstract soundscapes meld together with interviews and poetry as the listener controls their overlapping by pushing “play” and “pause” on the individual audio tracks.
– “Cluster XI Digital Edition – Online Festival,” Akimbo, 2020
Read the whole review HERE.
One of the works that has stuck with me is in the months since is Juro Kim Feliz’s A Study in Exile no. 4: Paagos (Drift), an abstract, layered soundscape that explores themes of migration, identity, and borders and “[probed] into the paradoxes of artist narratives under global migration.” In its digital presentation, listeners toggle between different tracks. The control this afforded the spectator was tantalisingly tactile. Yet instead of affecting proximity with the speakers, the auditory effect further fragmented the stories and sounds of exile and distance on the tracks. A timely reflection on broken promises of technology in a time of social isolation perhaps?
A short review on A Study in Exile, No. 4: Paagos (presented in Cluster XI: Digital Edition) by Tangram, precluding an interview feature with Cluster Music Festival director Ashley Au (August 2020).
Read the review (and Ashley Au’s interview) HERE.
Juro Kim Feliz in an interview with Soundstreams for Encounters in Exile (June 2019).
Read the interview HERE.
Philippine composer Juro Kim Felix’s [sic] “Pangkur,” written in 2017, was performed entirely in the dark by a quartet of violin, cello, flute and bass clarinet…
…Listening to these sounds in the dark created a spectrum of sound images and associations that watching the musicians play might have undermined.
– Knox TN Today, 2018
Read the review HERE.
The final work, Juro Kim Feliz’s Pangkur (2017), continued the use of onstage and offstage groups through an exploration of Javanese gamelan aesthetics where two independent pieces were performed simultaneously. The onstage duo of percussion and piano created rapidly interlocking patterns and melodies with an impressive array of percussion: wood blocks, crotales, marimba, a variety of drums, and triangles. Quietly uttered vocalizations added to this texture, which at first seemed like a sort of secret whispered conversation, but became words—excerpts from macapat poetic texts in the Javanese language. This shimmery and punctuated vocal exchange recalled Escobar’s intensely varied vocalisms, bringing the performance full circle.
– I Care If You Listen, 2018
Read the review HERE.
While all of the music performed was remarkable, the standouts for me were…the mesmerizing “A Study on Exile, No. 2” (this piece was performed in the audience, and broke the conventional no cell phones rule, as audience participation was required for recording).
– Culture Fancier, 2017
Read the review HERE.
…d’autres se sont démarqués par des compositions plus audacieuses et souvent moins comprises par le public…Ni ici, ni là-bas, une oeuvre pour flûte basse de Juro Kim Feliz, présentait une impressionnante recherche sur le champ des possibles entre la flûte et le souffle de la flûtiste.
– Sors-tu.ca, 2017
Read the review HERE.
An archived Manila Times news feature on Music Underkonstruction 4, premiering works for choir and orchestra including Sa Kanyang Pangungulila at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (July 2009).
Read the archived article HERE.
ELECTRONIC PRESS KITS
Click links below to download publicity materials.
- Juro Kim Feliz – biography.pdf
- Press photos.zip (high-resolution photos include photo credits; update: January 20, 2023)
- recent release! Liham: A Digital Song Cycle: Press release HERE.
- recent release! Liham: A Digital Song Cycle: Posters HERE and HERE.
Juro Kim Feliz 
