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Martha Strongin Katz

American musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 14, 2025
Entity authorityQ6774576 ↗
Source-derived summary

Martha Strongin Katz is a violist and member of the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) in Boston, Massachusetts, where she teaches viola and chamber music. She was a founding member of the Cleveland Quartet, along with her former husband, Paul Katz (cellist), and Peter Salaff and Donald Weilerstein (violinists). From 1969 until her departure from the group in 1980, she performed more than 1,000 concerts, including appearances at the White House, the Grammy Awards, on the NBC Today Show, and in the major concert halls of five continents.

A noted soloist, her appearances include a Carnegie Hall performance of Berlioz's Harold en Italie with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the Bartók Viola Concerto with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, recital and concerto performances at the 1989 International Viola Congress, and countless recital and concerto appearances.

Strongin Katz plays a viola made by Lorenzo Storioni of Cremona in 1800.

Ms. Strongin Katz previously served as a Professor of Viola at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University from 1996–2000 and at the Eastman School of Music, where she taught from 1976–1996. She has performed and taught at many summer music festivals, including: the Aspen Music Festival, the Banff Center for The ArtsNew, the Interlochen Arts Academy, Kneisel Hall in Bluehill, Maine, the Marlboro Music Festival, Musicorda at Mt. Holyoke College, the Perlman Music Program in Shelter Island, NY, the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Yale Summer School of Chamber Music, and the Heifetz International Music institute.

She has served on the jury of several prestigious international music competitions, including the Walter W. Naumburg Viola Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Editorial summary

“Martha Strongin Katz” enters the record as american musician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Martha, Strongin and Katz can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 1980, 1989, 1800—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1943-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Martha, Strongin and Katz.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Martha Strongin Katz” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Martha, Strongin and Katz provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6774576. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1980, 1989 and 1800.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Martha Strongin Katz”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Martha Strongin Katz primary sources, Martha Strongin Katz archive and Martha research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Martha Strongin Katz”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Martha Strongin Katz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.