Kimo Williams - Biography

Biography

James Kimo Williams was born in in Amityville, New York, and spent much of his childhood divided between 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 as well as setting the triple-jump record on the school track-team.

The night before enlisting in the US Army on July 4, 1969, he attended his first major music concert: Jimi Hendrix 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 basic training, he was sent to Viet Nam (the day after his 20th birthday), where he served with the 25th Combat Engineer Battalion 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 leaving Vietnam in 1970, Williams used his GI Benefit and attended the Berklee College of Music. While a student he founded The Paumalu Symphony, now known as Kimotion. In 1976 he met his music partner and future wife Carol, a fellow Berklee student. After teaching at Berklee for one year, he graduated in 1976 with a BA in Composition.

Williams and Carol married in 1978 and 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. That year, 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.

In 1997, Williams wrote the music for the Steppenwolf Theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire, leading to his partnership with Gary Sinise and, in 2003, the creation of the Lt. Dan Band. 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 2012 a new commission by Williams by the string quartet ETHEL will be premiered at the Park Avenue Armory.