The SEAMUS Board is happy to announce that Mari Kimura will be honored with the SEAMUS Award for 2025. The SEAMUS Award is a prestigious honor given annually to an outstanding musician, technologist, composer, or other professional who has made important contributions to the culture of electro-acoustic music in the United States during their career.
Dr. Kimura is an accomplished performer, composer, researcher, and entrepreneur who has made contributions to the field in each of these areas and the board is thrilled to grant her this award. Dr. Kimura will accept the award at the 2025 National SEAMUS Conference at Purdue University, where she will also be performing and presenting on her work.
You can learn more about Dr. Kimura’s work in her bio below and at her website https://www.marikimura.com/.
“Hailed by The New York Times as a “virtuoso playing at the edge,” Mari Kimura is a pioneering violinist, composer, and educator known for integrating technology into musical performance. She is widely recognized for her mastery of “subharmonics,” a groundbreaking bowing technique that enables violinists to produce pitches an octave below the instrument’s lowest string without altering the tuning. Kimura’s contributions to music and technology have earned her numerous prestigious accolades, including a Fromm Commission Award from Harvard, a residency at IRCAM in Paris, and support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Carnegie Corporation honored her as an “Immigrant: Pride of America” for her groundbreaking work.
In 2020, Kimura commercialized MUGIC®, a compact Wi-Fi motion sensor designed for wearable technology and artistic expression. Embraced by musicians, dancers, and visual artists, MUGIC® is now used at institutions such as Harvard University, UC Berkeley, the University of Arts in Berlin, and The Juilliard School. MUGIC® has been showcased on prestigious stages, including The Venice Biennale and The Lincoln Center in NYC, as part of their festival programs. Kimura’s compositions integrate motion-sensor technology, pushing the boundaries of contemporary music. She has premiered works commissioned by leading artists and ensembles, including percussionist Aiyun Huang, Decipher Ensemble, and Harvard New Music Ensemble.
A Graduate faculty member at The Juilliard School since 1998, Kimura was appointed Professor of Music at UC Irvine in 2017, where she teaches in the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) program. During the COVID-19 shutdown, she earned an MBA from the Merage School of Business at UCI. In 2020, she was nominated for the Entrepreneur Leader of the Year award and received a Certificate of Congressional Recognition from the U.S. House of Representatives and the California Legislature Assembly. MUGIC® is now available at https://mugicmotion.com/, supporting cutting-edge pedagogy and interdisciplinary artistic exploration.
Kimura studied violin with Joseph Fuchs at Juilliard, Roman Totenberg, Toshiya Eto, and Armand Weisbord, and composition with Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University. She has premiered works by John Adams, Luciano Berio, Tania León, and Salvatore Sciarrino and has performed with orchestras including the Hamburg Symphony, Hong Kong Symphonietta, and Tokyo Symphony.
A dedicated improviser, Kimura has collaborated with Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, Jim O’Rourke, John Oswald, and Robert Dick. Strings Magazine described her performances as “simply stunning… Kimura brings a rare level of excitement and grandeur to improvised music.” Her latest solo improvisation album, MUGETSU (2024), Elliott Sharp wrote in the liner notes: “[Her] improvisations display a sense of inevitability, my highest criterion for the spontaneous creation of music. Perhaps we can add the title of ‘architect’ to Mari’s list of talents.”