Vida Chenoweth

Vida Chenoweth (October 18, 1928 – December 14, 2018) was an American solo classical marimbist, ethnomusicologist, and linguist.

Credited with being the first to perform polyphonic music on the marimba and for doing for the marimba what Pablo Casals did for the cello and Andrés Segovia did for the guitar, she made her solo debut in Chicago in 1956, followed by a successful recital in New York. She subsequently gave concerts throughout the US and in Europe and the Americas.

Chenoweth, with her premiere of the Kurka marimba concerto in 1959, joined marimbist Ruth Stuber as one of the very few marimbists to perform in Carnegie Hall up to that time. Stuber premiered Paul Creston's "Concertino for Marimba with orchestra," which he had written for her, in Carnegie Hall in 1940.

After a hand injury when she was in her early 30s, she played a self-described farewell concert in Oklahoma in 1962 and retired from marimba performance to focus on mission work. She studied musicology and bible translation and became a missionary in New Guinea where she used her musicology training in developing her Christian message with indigenous music.

She was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1985 and into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1994 .

Early life Chenoweth's family owned a music store in Enid, Oklahoma and she was encouraged by her older brother to take up classical marimba.

Sydney David, a local music teacher, gave her initial instruction on the marimba in 1941. and is named as one of the two thousand outstanding musicians of the twentieth century.

In 1990, Chenoweth was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune while a professor at the Conservatory of Music, which housed more than 700 tapes she had recorded.