The Music Pioneer

Mari Kimura came to BU to study violin performance and left as an innovator at the intersection of art and technology

Excerpt from CFA, a publication of the Boston University College of Fine Arts

By Joel Brown
May 16, 2022

"Now a professor of music in the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program at UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, she is renowned as a violinist, performing with symphonies around the world, as well as for her innovations in “subharmonics,” a special bowing technique that produces notes an octave below the violin’s lowest string. She was invited to join the faculty at UC Irvine in 2017 in large part because of her growing use of digital technology, particularly motion detectors attached to her bow hand. The feedback she gets from the sensors—metrics such as the angle and acceleration of her arm—guides her own performances or the sounds, lighting, and projections that accompany them, and drives collaborative works with other artists."

Image: Mari Kimura, Photo credit: Conor Doherty