Committed to using music as a tool for social justice, violist Kathryn Dey is originally from Lake Mills, Wisconsin.  She is an innovative performer and educator, and has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.  Ms. Dey is a Surdna Foundation fellow and was awarded a grant to study and perform works for unaccompanied viola by Lillian Fuchs.  She plays regularly with organist David Turner as The Lila Duo.  Together the duo founded the Haiti Music Project, a program bringing over 2000 donated instruments to music schools and performing ensembles in the Central Plateau region of Haiti.  Ms. Dey has also served as a program consultant and guest artist at the Palotti School of Music in Belize City, Belize.  Her teaching has been recognized by ASTA, the American Viola Society and MTNA, among others, and students from her studio are now performing and teaching around the world.  Ms. Dey regularly presents workshops to teachers and students throughout the United States and has been recognized for her unique emphasis on interdisciplinary connections between music, creative writing and acting.  She is committed to building and sustaining rural South Carolina string programs in Chester, Fairfield, Jasper, Laurens, and Pickens counties.  Ms. Dey is on the faculty of the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts, and the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival workshop.  She is a co-founder of the Eastman Summer Viola Workshop, as well as the Viola Intensive Workshop.  Ms. Dey earned degrees in viola performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a student of Sally Chisholm, and at the Eastman School of Music, where she served as teaching assistant to John Graham.  Ms. Dey speaks fluent German, rides her bike wherever she can and together with her husband cellist Robert O’Brien, has been renovating a home in downtown Greenville, SC for over twenty years.