Violist Kirsten Docter was a First Prize winner of the Primrose International and American String Teachers Association Viola Competitions. She has made appearances at festivals including Aspen, Banff Centre for the Arts, Madeline Island, Mimir (TX and Melbourne, Australia), Sitka Summer Music, Interlochen, Kneisel Hall, Yale Summer School of Music and Art at Norfolk and Perlman Music Program. She served on the juries Primrose International Viola, the Fischoff National Chamber Music and the Sphinx Competitions. Ms. Docter has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Jaime Laredo, Alisa Weilerstein, Stephanie Blythe, Nathan Gunn, Alessio Bax as well as members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Takács, Emerson, Borodin, and Amadeus String Quartets. She can be heard on the Azica, New World and Gasparo Records labels.

As the former violist of the Naumburg Chamber Music award-winning Cavani String Quartet, Ms. Docter served on the chamber music and viola faculties at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Quartet performances include appearances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Festival de L’Epau, France, and the Honolulu Chamber Music Society. The Quartet was featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and St. Paul Sunday, NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS television, and received the ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, two Guarneri String Quartet Residency Awards and eight Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Grants.

Ms. Docter is Associate Professor of Viola at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She has given numerous viola and chamber music masterclasses at Universities and Music Schools. She is on the viola faculty of the Perlman Music Program and the Madeline Island Music Camp. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, she continued her studies at the Curtis Institute of Music.