Milton Katims was a violist and conductor of the Seattle Symphony for more than two decades. He helped the Seattle Symphony grow into one of the major regional orchestras in the country as its Music Director.
Katims was born on June 24, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York, to Austro-Hungarian and Russian parents. He graduated from Columbia University with a psychology degree in 1929. He began his graduate studies at Columbia and switched from violin to viola.
Katims worked as the assistant conductor and solo violist for radio station WOR in New York from 1935 until 1943 and as first violist for the NBC Orchestra from 1943 until 1954. In 1947, Katims became assistant conductor of the NBC Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, who invited Katims to guest conduct the orchestra in 52 coast-to-coast broadcasts. In the same year, he began teaching at the Julliard School of Music, a position he held until 1954. He often joined the Budapest String Quartet as a guest artist and produced several recordings with the group. Katims guest-conducted numerous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, London Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and Montreal Symphony.
In 1953, Katims conducted three sold-out concerts with the Seattle Symphony and, one year later in 1954, accepted a post as Music Director of the Seattle Symphony. Virginia Peterson, his wife who had her own performing career, focused on promoting the Seattle Symphony, lending her name and presence to fundraising efforts, opening her home to donors, and educating and recruiting new audiences, all without a salary of her own. During his time as the Seattle Symphony’s 13th Music Director, Katims took the orchestra on two tours of Alaska and a tour of the West Coast, created the Little Orchestra, and expanded the Family Concerts to 15 urban and suburban areas. He increased the Seattle Symphony’s repertory and national profile as well as staged concert versions of 20th century operas such as Pulenc’s La Voix Humaine. The Symphony was awarded federal Title III funds and funding through the state legislature to fund free concerts for schoolchildren. The orchestra moved from the barn-like Civic Auditorium to a 3,000 seat Opera House after fundraising in 1962. The Opera House served as the orchestra’s home until 1998.
In 1970, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Seattle Symphony $100,000, which it increased the following year to $150,000. Katims received the Columbia University Alice M. Ditson Award for conductors in 1964. In 1966, he was named Seattle’s “First Citizen” by the Seattle-King County Association of Realtors. He became such a prominent figure in Seattle that in 1969 he was featured on the local telephone directory.
In 1976, Katims and his family moved to Texas after Katims was pushed out by the Symphony’s board of directors who encouraged him to move on. He served as the artistic director of the School of Music at the University of Houston for eight years. He eventually returned to Seattle and, in 2004, he and his wife wrote a memoir, “The Pleasure Was Ours.” In 1986, he was honored with the Arturo Toscanini Artistic Achievement Award and in 1997 received the Lifetime Accomplishment in the Arts award from the Seattle Corporate Council for the Arts. The publisher, International Music Company, printed about three-dozen of Katims’s editions and transcriptions for viola students and his recorded work as a conductor and viola player were released by CBS Records, RCA, Mercury, Vox, and Pantheon. Katims died on February 27, 2006, at the age of 96.
Sources: New York Times obituary, Playbill obituary, HistoryLink.
Organized into 3 accessions.
This collection consists primarily of annotated music scores belonging to Milton Katims and other materials documenting Katims' artistic career; programs from Milton Katims's memorial; high school diploma from Erasmus Hall High School and College Entrance Diploma; correspondence; clippings; articles; speeches; writings; scrapbook mainly with clippings of Katmis's time with the Seattle Symphony from 1964-1969 and a loose photograph of what appears to be the Seattle Symphony; cassette tapes; 8 and 16mm film; betacam tapes; VHS; 1/4" reel to reel; and vinyls. Moving image materials are about Katims' performances and travels with his family including a visit to Toscanini's house. Audio materials are mainly of his performances as a viola player and conductor.
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Some material stored offsite; advance notice required for use.
The creators' literary rights have been transferred to the University of Washington Libraries; copyrights to other materials unknown.
Some material stored offsite; advance notice required for use.