Associate Professor of Music
Kirk D. Moss is an Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Education Department at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, WI. He serves as the elected national president of the 10,000-member American String Teachers Association. Dr. Moss has appeared as a guest conductor, clinician, or adjudicator in more than thirty states. In 2008, the University of Florida (Gainesville) School of Music awarded him an Alumni Outstanding Achievement Award. He has received four ASTA National Citation for Leadership & Merit awards. One of his former high schools honors him by annually awarding a college string scholarship in his name. He coauthored Sound Development for Intermediate String Orchestra by Alfred Music Publishing (2012).
Moss has written articles for Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra––Volumes 2 and 3, Journal of String Research, American String Teacher, Music Educators Journal, and The Instrumentalist. He also completed a four-year term on the Music Educators Journal Editorial Committee for MENC.
He has twelve years experience teaching elementary, middle, and high school orchestras. School orchestras under his direction performed for The Midwest Clinic (Chicago), Jubilee 2000 (Italy), earned the Gold Award at The San Francisco International Music Festival, the Grand Champion Award at The Orlando Festival of Music, and played three times for the Georgia MEA Conference (including a performance/clinic by the school’s thirty member viola choir).
Prior to his Lawrence appointment, he led orchestral activities and string education at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Under his baton, the MSU-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra tripled in size, and it performed for the 2009 Minnesota Music Educators Association Conference and 2007 North Dakota MEA Conference. He previously worked as Area Chair in Music Education at Valdosta State University and led the South Georgia String Project. He has conducted on the summer faculties of the Lamar Stringfield Music Camp (NC) and Interlochen Arts Camp (MI).
Moss holds a PhD in Music Education, conducting emphasis, from the University of Florida (Gainesville). He received a Master of Music degree, with a cognate in string pedagogy, from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a graduate teaching assistant for Gerald Doan and a Bachelor of Music degree, with high distinction, from the University of Michigan under the guidance of Robert Culver. Kirk and his wife, Deb, celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. They have three children: Bethany, Luke, and Lydia.
Contact by e-mail: kirk.d.moss@lawrence.edu
