Dorothy Kitchen

Dorothy Kitchen, Founder and Director of the Duke University String School, has been an educator for 42 years. She was educated at the Eastman School of Music, Western Reserve University, the University of London, Brandeis University and the Longy School of Music, and her violin teachers included Jaroslav Holesovsky, Millard Taylor, Wolfe Wolfinsohn, Eugene Kilinski, Julia Kohl, and Georgio Ciompi.

She has taught violin and chamber music at the Longy School of Music, the Ecole Ste. Trinite in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was Professor for Youth at the Fourth International Festival of Music in Lima, Peru. She now teaches violin, viola and chamber music and conducts the Duke University String School Chamber Orchestra. Her playing career includes solos with the Dayton Philharmonic, the Greensboro Symphony, the St. Stephen's Chamber Orchestra (SCOR; now the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle), and the Trinite Philharmonic of Haiti. She was Associate concertmistress of the Greensboro Symphony, Principal Second of the SCOR, and, for many years, Principal Second of the Duke Symphony Orchestra. She toured as part of the Kitchen-Nicolson Baroque duo for six years. She has served as String Chairman of the North Carolina Music Teachers Association and is Co-Chair of the Durham Music Teachers Association's Performance Festival. She is the author of a small book for beginning violinists and has written about music for the Durham Herald-Sun, the Dayton Daily News,and CVNC.

Kitchen has been honored as "Teacher of the Year" by the NCSA, had a day named for her by the City of Durham, and received the Ella Fountain Pratt Lifetime Award for Service to Music from the Durham Arts Council.

Articles by Dorothy Kitchen: