Kate Rogers, PhD

Biography

Dr. Kate Rogers teaches Music History and Viola at Pacific University, bridging the spaces between academic and applied musical studies.

Her research centers primarily on video game music, and she has presented her work at the annual meetings of the North American Conference on Video Game Music, the Society for American Music, and the American Musicological Society. Dr. Rogers’s current project explores how game sounds migrated from video arcades into popular music throughout the 1980s, eventually becoming a lasting part of American cultural consciousness. Her other research interests include music history pedagogy and the seventeenth-century English division violin tradition.

Dr. Rogers directly applies her music history expertise to her approaches to viola pedagogy and performance. She strives to integrate cultural and historical contexts into her private studio and  customizes her teaching approach to fit each student’s learning processes and musical priorities. A specialist in violin and viola pedagogy, she has trained in methodologies developed by Shinichi Suzuki, D.C. Dounis, and Paul Rolland. As a performer, Dr. Rogers specializes in both modern viola and historically informed performance practice. She has performed with the Oregon Bach Collegium, Oregon Mozart Players, and Eugene Symphony, as well as at music festivals in California, Washington, Vermont, and São Paulo, Brazil.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Historical Musicology, Case Western Reserve University
Master of Arts, Musicology, University of Oregon
Master of Music, Viola Performance & String Pedagogy, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Music, Viola Performance, University of Oregon