Kemp Stillings

Katharine Kemp Stillings (June 30, 1888 – April 30, 1967) was a violinist, composer, and music educator.

Kemp Stillings
Kemp Stillings and her violin, from a 1917 publication
Born	Katharine Kemp Stillings (1888-06-30)June 30, 1888 Roxbury, Massachusetts
Died	April 30, 1967(1967-04-30) (aged 78) New York City
Occupation(s)	Violinist, music educator

Early life

Katharine Kemp Stillings was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and began studying violin from a very early age. She went to Berlin to study with Joseph Joachim, and to Saint Petersburg for further studies with Leopold Auer.^[1]

Career

Stillings performed in Russia and Finland before World War I.^[2] She played with pianist Frances Nash in 1917 and 1918, in New York and several other American cities, and was a guest soloist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.^[3][4][5] She toured in South America in 1920.^[6]

Stillings became suddenly blind in the 1920s, and after that focused on teaching.^[7] "It has been a handicap, but also a blessing," she told an interviewer in 1940. "It has made my critical hearing ever so much more acute. Besides, something like this makes us so human."^[8] She was on the faculty at the New Jersey College for Women from 1927 to 1952,^[9] and taught her own master classes in New York City,^[10] which were modeled on the pedagogy of Joachim and Auer.^[11] Her students included conductor Walter Eisenberg.^[12]

Stillings published violin exercise books for children, The Great Adventure (1928), At the Crossroads (1929), and The Giant Talks (1929),^[13] and wrote compositions with titles like "Take a Little Eighth Note", "Tick Tock", and "Double Meaning".^[14] She also took an interest in cookery, sharing recipes for fruit dishes with a newspaper in 1940.^[15]

Personal life

Kemp Stillings died in 1967, at her home in New York City.^[16]