Kathy Judd has led a multifaceted musical life as a chamber-music violinist, soloist, orchestral and commercial musician, teacher, and arts administrator.
She was a violinist in the St. Paul (MN) Chamber Orchestra, with which she performed in the US, Western and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, and was a soloist. She was Concertmaster and soloist of orchestras including the Las Vegas Symphony, Boulder (CO) Bach Festival, and the Nevada Chamber Orchestra, and a string contractor, lead player, and member of Las Vegas showroom orchestras for major headliners. She performed in various orchestras, festivals, and chamber ensembles.
As a teacher, she was a faculty at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, an international residential high school in California, where she was a member of the ensemble-in-residence that performed in the US and Taiwan. She was Assistant Professor and member of the trio-in-residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was adjunct violin faculty at Elizabethtown College (PA) and coached chamber music at Temple University Music Prep. She has taught at music camps in Nevada, Vermont, California, and Maryland. In 24/25 she was Adjunct Associate Professor at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA.
As a complement to music, after 500 hours of training, she became a certified medical support hypnotherapist in December 2024, to specifically work with performing artists. Currently, she is studying the Simpson Protocol - a client-centered, private process, where the client's own deeper mind determines the cause and solution of the issue.
As an arts administrator for over 25 years, Judd was Executive and Artistic Director of the Washington Conservatory of Music, a nationally accredited community music school (near DC), ending her tenure June 1, 2024. She was Chair of the music department at Idyllwild (CA) Arts Academy, and Artistic and Executive Director of Music at Gretna (PA), a year-round chamber music and jazz series presenting artists such as the Count Basie Orchestra, Nancy Wilson, the Shanghai, Borromeo, and Audubon string quartets, and commissioning and curating performances. Judd served as a grants panelist for a private foundation, state, and national panels. She was a visiting evaluator for a national arts accreditation organization. ​
She earned an undergraduate degree in violin performance from New England Conservatory and a 3-year Master of Musical Arts performance degree from Yale University, with studies at Wichita State University and at various summer festivals.
As a believer in the power of humor, she once sold six one-liners to comedienne Joan Rivers. As a lover of adventure travel, she camped in the Amazon Rainforest, trekked to the top of Kilimanjaro, walked 100 miles in the Cotswolds, kayaked in Vietnam, hoed potatoes in Scotland, hiked in the Himalayas, and rode camels in the Sahara Desert.
