Kathryn Hilger, Artistic Director
Violist Kathryn Hilger is an active freelance musician and music educator in the Kansas City area. Kathryn earned a Bachelor’s in Viola Performance from University of Missouri — Kansas City and a Master’s in Viola Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Ms. Hilger serves as the Artistic Director and Principal Viola for Midwest Chamber Ensemble. She also serves Acting Principal Viola for the Topeka Symphony and can be found performing with various other local ensembles as well as occasionally subbing with the Kansas City Symphony. Lately, much of Ms. Hilger’s time is spent working as a Teaching Artist with Harmony Project KC, an organization that aims to provide deserving students with a path to higher education through free music instruction. She also maintains a small private studio.
Ho Man Clara Lee, Marketing & Personnel
As a Hong Kong native, Clara Lee began playing violin at age four with Yao-ji Lin from Central Conservatory of Music of Beijing. At twelve she won both violin concerto and duet competitions for the 57th Hong Kong Schools Music Festival. Two years later she was awarded a fellowship diploma from Trinity College London. Clara received her Bachelor of Music from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Master of Music at UMKC, and earned her artist certifi cate in spring of 2020 with Professor Benny Kim.
An active member of Kansas City’s classical music scene, she is winner of the 1st Tiberius Klausner Youth Concerto Competition. She is also section violinist in both Topeka Symphony (2018 – 19) and Wichita Symphony (2018 – ) and continues to play in Kansas City Symphony as a substitute musician.
Clara maintains a private teaching studio and regularly partners with Sprouts KC — an organization on a mission to make classical music accessible to children from every corner of Kansas City.
Sara McClure, Musicologist
Sara has served as both the Music Director at Prairie Baptist Church in Prairie Village, KS, and the Artistic Director of Midwest Chamber Ensemble’s annual ChoralFest for over a decade. She is a PhD candidate in musicology at the University of Kansas and the Musicologist-in-Residence for MCE.
Sara has a wide range of research interests, but her dissertation focuses on classical music and elitism through a study of orchestral ensembles in nineteenth-century St. Louis. She has taught classes at KU, UMKC’s Flossie Pack Center for Lifelong Learning, and recently taught a course for first-semester students at UMKC. A native of the Philadelphia, PA, suburbs, Sara holds degrees in musicology and choral conducting from the College of William & Mary, East Carolina University, and UMKC.