About our Director

Our Director, Katherine Stalberg, has 30 years experience as a solo, chamber music and orchestral performer. She earned her music degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and studied Music Therapy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, she played and toured with Ecuadorean National Symphony and worked as a music therapist in special education settings.

Kitty has attended numerous musical institutions and camps, including Greenwood Music Camp (Massachusetts), Kneisal Hall (Maine), and the Music Academy of the West (California). She has played with the New Music Orchestra and Washington Philharmonia (Washington, D.C.), and Camellia Orchestra (Sacramento, California) . She is principal viola with the Chapel Hill Philharmonia. In addition to other freelancing engagements, she is active in local theater productions, having performed solo viola in the acclaimed "Blue Roses" and the "Crucible" with Man Bites Dog and Archipelago Theater in collaboration with Duke University, and most recently with the "Little Women" Broadway production at Duke. She hones her chamber music skills by participating annually in the Chapel Hill Chamber Music Workshop and the recently organized "September Prelude" workshop.

In addition to her musical performance credentials, Kitty has been a program manager and volunteer coordinator in her professional life. She worked over a decade as program director for an international development agency in Washington, D.C., and several years as a hazard mitigation specialist with FEMA and the Office of Emergency Services in Northern California. Since returning to North Carolina in 1992, Kitty has served as President of the North Carolina-Cochabamba, Bolivia Partners of the Americas. She continues to volunteer for the NC Partners, organizing youth musician exchanges between North Carolina institutions and the Laredo Institute in Bolivia. In recent years she has raised funds and helped to program the exchange of dozens of young musicians from North Carolina and Bolivia.