Kathleen Butler-Hopkins
Professor of Violin, Viola, & Chamber Music Emeritus
Kathleen Butler-Hopkins is a violinist who has concertized in major forums in the United States and Europe. She is a veteran of both the Tanglewood Festival and the “Yale in Norfolk” summer music programs, and her many concert credits include performances in both Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York. In addition to her activities as soloist and chamber musician, she has served as assistant concertmaster for the Boston Civic Symphony, and as concertmaster for other regional orchestras along the east coast.
Dr. Butler-Hopkins is Professor Emerita of Violin, Viola, and Chamber Music at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She retired from UAF in July 2014. Dr. Butler-Hopkins holds Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Musical Arts degrees from Yale University School of Music, where she was a scholarship student of Broadus Erle, Syoko Aki, and Joseph Silverstein, former concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At Yale, she was chosen as the School of Music student marshal, in the year of her graduation, for outstanding work done during the course of her doctoral degree program. She received both Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School as a scholarship student of Sally Thomas and attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Jascha Brodsky. Dr. Butler-Hopkins studied chamber music with Gilbert Kalish, Gunther Schuller, and members of the Juilliard, Guarneri, Tokyo, and Budapest String Quartets, and received a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the string quartets of Beethoven with Lewis Lockwood at Harvard University. Under the auspices of the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship Program, she completed a year of study with Professor Wolfgang Schneiderhan at the Vienna State Academy in Austria.
At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Dr. Butler-Hopkins served as concertmaster and soloist with the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra (the touring arm of the FSO), and as a member of the Alaska Trio, the Alaska Chamber Ensemble, and the Alaska Chamber Players. She also appeared as violin and viola soloist with the Fairbanks Youth Orchestra. She performed as concertmaster for orchestras with the Western Opera Theater, Opera Fairbanks, the Fairbanks Light Opera Theatre, and the Fairbanks Choral Arts Orchestra. She participates in convention performances across the country. Her prize-winning students continue to distinguish themselves at such summer festivals as Tanglewood, Meadowmount, Musicorda, Bowdoin, Encore, and Indiana Summer String Academy, and have won a variety of awards including the Northwest Division of the MTNA Collegiate Auditions. Dr. Butler-Hopkins was on the faculty of the UAF Summer Fine Arts Camp and the UAF Summer Music Academy, was a master teacher at the Juneau Jazz and Classics String Workshop, and was the chamber music coordinator at the Fairbanks Suzuki Institute and the String Symposium, sponsored by the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra. She also coached chamber music at the Central Pennsylvania Suzuki Institute. She is currently a regular faculty member at the Lake Placid (NY) Institute for the Arts and Humanities Chamber Music Seminar and was the founder of String Fling, a chamber music program for Alaskan pre-college students. Dr. Butler-Hopkins was a contributor to Stringsmagazine, was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, was listed in “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers,” and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi. She received a UAF College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, was named String Teacher of the Year by the Alaska String Teachers Association, and was a recipient of the prestigious Usibelli Distinguished Service Awardat UAF. She is currently affiliated with William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.