Mari Kimura is a prolific violinist/composer, a leading figure in the field of interactive computer music, and most recently known as the developer of a motion sensor system called MUGIC®. Mari is renowned for her mastery of subharmonics—the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin’s lowest string. She has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fromm Commission Award from Harvard, a residency at IRCAM in Paris, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In recognition of her ground-breaking work, Mari was named “Immigrants: Pride of America” by the Carnegie Corporation.

Mari is widely praised for her dynamic performances as an interpreter, as well as an improviser. She also performed as a soloist with major orchestras such as Tokyo Philharmonic and Hamburg Symphony and gave premieres of many notable works. Mari performs in a wide range of festivals, from classical to well known computer music and improvised music, in such venues as: ISCM World Music Days, Chigiana Festival in Italy, Spring in Budapest, International Bartók Festival, Festival Cervantino in Mexico, Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, International Symposium of Electronic Arts, New Interface for Musical Expression, International Computer Music, Victoriaville (FIMAV) festival in Canada and ImproTech festivals organized by IRCAM. In 2020, Mari released MUGIC® commercially. A small WIFI device which can be worn as a ‘wearable tech’ or attached to objects, MUGIC® is intended to eliminate the disciplinary divide and enable new forms of art to emerge and flourish. Today, MUGIC® has been used by musicians, dancers, and visual artists across the globe. MUGIC® is also acquired for educational purpose by many noteworthy institutions such as Harvard University, UC Berkeley, the Peabody Institute at John Hopkins, University of Arts (UdK)in Berlin, and the Juilliard School.

Mari’s recent works focus on human/machine integration using MUGIC®, performing, composing, and commissioning new works. In 2019, Mari commissioned composer Dai Fujikura to write “Motion Notions” published by Ricordi; in 2021, Mari composed “Iron Bird” for cymbal and MUGIC®, for virtuoso percussionist Aiyun Huang, premiered at the Nabla Festival in Italy; she also composed “KISMET” for Decipher Ensemble, premiered at the New Music for Strings festival in Aarhus, Denmark; and most recently Mari composed “Pensamiento” for piano and MUGIC®, which was premiered at MIT in Boston.

A Graduate Faculty at The Juilliard School since 1998, Mari was appointed as Full Professor of Music at “Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology” program at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine in 2017, and she received the Faculty Innovation Fellowship from Applied Innovation at UCI. During the Covid shutdown, she enrolled in Executive MBA program at Merage School of Business at UCI, receiving her MBA degree in June 2022. In 2020, Mari was nominated as the Entrepreneur Leader of the Year award at UCI and received the Certificate of Congressional Recognition from the US. House of Representatives and the California Legislature Assembly.