James "Kimo" Williams (born January 8, 1950) is an American composer, musician and professor who has performed with a number of ensembles including his ensemble Kimotion and the
Lt. Dan Band, that he co-founded with film/TV actor
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise (; born March 17, 1955) is an American actor, director, producer, musician and humanitarian. Among other awards, he has won a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has ...
. While he is perhaps best known for his work with the Lt. Dan Band, Williams has worked on a number of other projects including: award-winning photography, releasing four CDs, writing a stageplay and working on an opera based on the courts martial of
Henry Ossian Flipper, the first black graduate from
West Point
The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...
. Cognizant of the opportunities he had, as well as those he did not due to a childhood in which he moved often, Williams speaks to students about his history, their future and their need to combat mediocrity.
Background
James Kimo Williams was born in
Amityville, New York, and spent much of his childhood divided between U.S. Air Force bases, and on his grandparents' sharecropper farm in North Carolina, where he picked tobacco, plowed fields and tended livestock on their rural farm.
In 1968, he moved to Hawaii to join his father (a career Air Force Sergeant) and attended Leilehua High School. A dedicated, but inexperienced guitar player, he also took up sports and was an all-star football performer with a scholarship invitation from Arizona State.
The night before enlisting in the US Army on July 4, 1969, he attended his first major music concert:
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Inducted ...
playing at the Waikiki Bowl. He was so inspired by this concert and the music of Jimi Hendrix, that he dedicated himself to music and playing guitar.
After leaving Vietnam in 1970, Williams used his GI Benefit and attended the
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music () is a Private university, private music college in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern Music of the United ...
. While a student he founded The Paumalu Symphony, now known as Kimotion. After teaching at Berklee for one year, he graduated in 1976 with a BA in Composition.
In 1976 Williams met his music partner and future wife Carol, a fellow Berklee student and married two years later.
Career
Military
After basic training, he was sent to
Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
(the day after his 20th birthday), where he served with a unit of the 20th Combat Engineer Brigade in Lai Khe, building roads and clearing land in the jungle. One of Williams' earliest, and most often cited, musical opportunities was in Vietnam when an Army entertainment director heard him play and suggested that he perform for the troops in the field. The Soul Coordinators was born of this request and started Kimo Williams' long resume of performances, both with bands and on his own.
After completing his studies at
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music () is a Private university, private music college in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern Music of the United ...
marrying his wife in 1978, the couple together joined the Army Band program, spending a year with the 9th Infantry Division Band at Ft. Lewis, Washington. Kimo went on to attend Officer Candidate School and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in 1980. His first assignment brought him to Fort Sheridan, IL: close enough to Chicago that he and Carol could continue producing and performing with his large ensemble (now called “Kimotion”) and their small-group “Williams and Williams”, in local clubs and concert venues. They set up a music publishing company (One Omik Music), as well as launched their own record company (Little Beck Music). To record their music, they rehabbed an old storefront in Chicago, and built and operated a recording studio there.
In 1983 he earned his MA in Management from
Webster University.
When he left the army in 1987 to pursue composing full-time he had risen to the rank of captain. He taught at Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and in the Music Department at Columbia College Chicago.
He completed his military service in the Army Reserves by becoming the Bandmaster for the 85th Division Army Reserve Band, and retired from the Army Reserves as a Chief Warrant Officer in 1996.
Music composition and academia
In 1997, Williams wrote the music for the
Steppenwolf Theatre production of ''
A Streetcar Named Desire'', leading to his partnership with
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise (; born March 17, 1955) is an American actor, director, producer, musician and humanitarian. Among other awards, he has won a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has ...
and, in 2003, the creation of the
Lt. Dan Band (named for Sinise's character in film ''
Forrest Gump
''Forrest Gump'' is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis. An adaptation of the Forrest Gump (novel), 1986 novel by Winston Groom, the screenplay of the film is written by Eric Roth. It stars Tom Hanks in the title rol ...
''). Also in 1997, he directed the Goodman Theatre's production of the August Wilson play, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”. In 2008, Williams' ''Fanfare for Life'' was performed during the Alabama Symphony's annual musical tribute to
Martin Luther King Jr.
His compositions include works for chamber ensembles and orchestras and have been performed by groups worldwide, including the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Sinfonietta.
In October 2013 a commission by Williams for the string quartet
ETHEL was premiered at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a multi-arts center in Brooklyn, New York City. It hosts progressive and avant-garde performances, with theater, dance, music, opera, film programming across multiple nearby venues.
BAM was chartered in 18 ...
.
In 1996, he accepted a position in the Arts Entertainment and Media Management Department of
Columbia College. He remains as of 2011 a tenured associate professor teaching music.
Honors
Kimo Williams was named Chicagoan of the Year in 2006, and was recognized for a lifetime of work including the 1998 founding of the United States Vietnam Art Program.
In 1999, he received the
Lancaster Symphony Orchestra's Composer Award,
and has been the recipient of honors from the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Savannah Symphony Orchestra. Buffalo Soldiers, one of his most well-known works, was the result of a commission by The West Point Academy to celebrate their 2002 Bicentennial.
In 2007 he was named a
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
for his works in music, education and history.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Kimo
American male composers
21st-century American composers
Living people
1950 births
21st-century American male musicians
Lt. Dan Band members