MICHAEL KIMBER, violist and composer

Michael Kimber, a resident of Iowa City since the summer of 2004, was a member of the viola section of Orchestra Iowa from 2004 until his retirement in 2024. He taught viola at Coe College from 2005 until his retirement in 2020. He has also been visiting professor of viola at the University of Iowa (spring semesters 2007 and 2016) and at the University of Northern Iowa (spring semester 2011). His wife, Dr. Marian Wilson Kimber, is professor of musicology at the University of Iowa. Both previously held tenured faculty positions at the University of Southern Mississippi, where they taught from 1999 to 2004.

After completing his doctorate in 1975 as a student of Raphael Hillyer—the founding violist of the Juilliard String Quartet—Kimber joined the Alexandria Quartet for a year-long residency at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, Australia. On returning to the U.S. he performed as violist of the now-legendary Kronos Quartet in concerts from coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada, including appearances at Lincoln Center in New York City.

In 1977 Kimber was invited to join the Atlanta Virtuosi as a founding member. During his fifteen-year association with this ensemble he twice toured Europe, participated in chamber music residencies in Maine and Mexico, and recorded significant new chamber music works. As a baroque violinist and violist he has performed in London, Boston, the Midwest, the Southeast, and at the Baroque Performance Institute at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. From 1995 to 2009 he performed in Kansas City’s Summerfest chamber music series.

From 1979 to 1999 Kimber was viola professor at the University of Kansas. He was a founding member and the principal violist of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra (1987-99) and the principal violist of the Kansas City Camerata (1994-98). Kimber has also served as principal violist of the New Hampshire Music Festival orchestra and the Meridian Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared as viola soloist with orchestras in the central and eastern United States and has been heard as soloist on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”

Dr. Kimber’s detailed studies of intonation and tuning systems are summarized in his influential article on teaching an awareness of melodic and harmonic intonation, published in the spring 1992 issue of American String Teacher. He is the author of the chapter on teaching the intermediate violist in the book Playing and Teaching the Viola, published in 2005 by ASTA with NSOA. In 1990 he designed the poly-pad, a contoured poly-foam shoulder pad for viola and violin used and recommended by thousands of teachers, students, and professional performers throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Kimber is also the composer of numerous works for viola. His music has been included in repertoire lists of such eminent viola artist-teachers as Donald McInnes and Patricia McCarty, as well as in Carolyn Broe’s “Progressive Etudes for the Viola”. The Swiss researcher Konrad Ewald, in his Musik für Bratsche (Music for Viola), writes “I count myself fortunate to have become acquainted with the music of American violist M. Kimber,” then devotes more than a full page to listings and descriptions of the music. Eminent Polish violist Marcin Murawski has recorded eight CDs of Kimber’s viola music for Acte Préalable. In 2015 Kimber’s Vanishing Woods for clarinet and viola was premiered at Carnegie Hall alongside works by Libby Larsen and other renowned American composers. .

Ensembles and organizations that have commissioned and/or performed his music during his years as a member of the Iowa Composers Forum include Red Cedar Chamber Music, the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra and symphony string quartet, the Iowa City Community String Orchestra, the Valley High School Orchestra of West Des Moines, the Iowa City Viola Quartet, the City High and West High School Orchestras of Iowa City, ViolaFest MidWest at the University of Iowa, and the American Viola Society. A movement of his Traveling Music was selected as theme music for Iowa Public Radio’s “Symphonies of Iowa” broadcasts, first aired in summer 2006, and is still being heard eighteen years later. Kimber was composer-in-residence for Red Cedar Chamber Music from 2019 to 2023; videos of their performances of his music that they have commissioned can be viewed on their YouTube channel. Kimber’s music has also been featured in festivals of the Iowa Composers Forum and has been twice selected for performance on Fifteen Minutes of Fame, a production of Vox Novus. In 2021 his string orchestra composition Perseverance received honorable mention in the 75th Anniversary Composition Competition of the American String Teachers Association.

Awards and honors have included the 1999 Kansas Educator of the Year award of the Kansas Federation of Music Clubs; the 2002 music composition award of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters; the 2010 Founders Award of the American Viola Society in recognition of his compositions for viola; the 2011-2012 Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year Award of the Iowa String Teachers Association; and in 2023 the prestigious Silver Alto Clef award of the International Viola Society for his worldwide contributions to the viola.

Updated May 19, 2024.

View Michael Kimber’s resume