Meet the trio.
Kimberly Carballo serves in the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as Director of JAVA (Jacobs Academy: Virtual Academy) and as faculty in the Chamber Music and Collaborative Piano department. Ms. Carballo is also an active international performer and educator, teaching both at the university and in her private studio. She is a strong believer in and practicer of community engagement locally and globally. She founded Reimagining Opera for Kids (ROK), a music community engagement and education program based in Bloomington, Indiana. She participates annually as faculty advisor for the Indiana University portion of the team in the Cheerful Heart Music Education Mission in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. She is a founding member of the Amity Trio, a chamber ensemble that commissions and performs new music in order to amplify underrepresented voices. Ms. Carballo also forms part of the inaugural and ongoing team for Tunaweza Kimuziki (Through Music All is Possible), a project promoting exchange among music educators, scholars, and performers in Kenya and the USA.
Kimberly Carballo
Dr. Michael Walker
Dr. Michael Walker inspires students and audiences alike with his multimedia, cross-cultural collaborations and imaginative recontextualization of the concert experience. As Associate Professor of Horn at the University of New Mexico, and a founding member of the Amity Trio, he leverages skills in entrepreneurship, musicianship and pedagogy to champion musical experiences outside the traditional Western conservatory canon.
Dr. Walker believes in creating and curating concert and listening opportunities through commissions and partnerships with composers, musicians and artists. Amity Trio recorded its debut album, Between Us Now in 2022, featuring commissioned music by composers who identify as women. A second series of albums, Border Crossings, featuring music by Mexican and New Mexican composers, is in progress. Amity Trio also has partnered with Mexican composer Nur Slim twice for bilingual children’s opera productions produced both onstage and virtually, Lucrecia y el canto de los Dudasaurios (2022) and the upcoming Oliverso (2024). Dr. Walker has commissioned over fifteen additional pieces for horn and natural horn, including chamber and solo pieces by Teresa Careño, Alice Jones, Francisco Cortés-Álvarez, Tonia Ko, Lauren Bernofsky, Ryan Chase, and Dana Wilson.
Dr. Walker is also responsible for much of the entrepreneurial and organizational work that empowers his projects with Amity Trio and other musical collaborators. Over the last three years, he was awarded ten separate awards to achieve recording, performance, and commission-related goals. In 2021, Dr. Walker was appointed as Associate Chair of the UNM Music Department, where he continues to use his business acumen and leadership skill to promote the growth and wellbeing of UNM Music. His students broaden their musical training through building leadership skills and experimenting with historically informed performance via his Seraphinoff replica natural horns from the early 19th century.
Dr. Walker also contributes to the local music scene as a performer, appearing regularly with the New Mexico Winds, Enchantment Brass, Opera Southwest, and Santa Fe Pro Music. He served as Second Horn of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic for three years, and has performed with the New Mexico Philharmonic, Santa Fe Symphony, Performance Santa Fe, Utah Festival Opera, and others. If he is not holding a horn you can find him camping and fly fishing the idyllic southwest with his wife and daughter.
Katie Dukes Walker
American soprano Katie Dukes Walker embraces the present-day relevance and excitement of classical music. She lives this belief through her work as performer, entrepreneur and educator. She believes the future of the creative arts lies within engaging new audiences in innovative and accessible ways. In addition to performing throughout the United States, Katie has performed internationally in locations such as Italy, Austria, and Belgium. Her ten years of executive leadership in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors with Amity Trio, Studio Forza and Chamber Music Campania exemplify her love for arts administration and leadership.
At the core of all her artistic output, Mrs. Dukes Walker believes in the power of community engagement, interdisciplinary arts and arts leadership. Currently, through an exciting collaboration with Mexican Composer, Nur Slim, Katie is spearheading the creation of a film adaptation of a bi-lingual dinosaur opera for children, Lucrecia y el canto de los dudasarios. She currently teaches two courses with the Arts Leadership and Business Program at the University of New Mexico: Business Planning for the Arts and Financial Management for Artists. Since 2019, as a part of Amity Trio, she has been co-awarded over ten grants. Having a savvy entrepreneurial spirit to procure support and funding is essential to her career, and she wants to share this knowledge with her students.
As a diverse singer of chamber music and opera, Katie has brought music to new audiences on the international and national stage through Opera Southwest, Reimagining Opera for Kids, Intimate Opera of Indianapolis, as well as in chamber performances with the Fiati Five wind quintet, the Kaemper Music Series, Carrizozo Music, and the Amity Trio (of which she is a founding member). In 2022, Amity Trio released their debut album Between Us Now and is slated to record their second album, “Border Crossings” in the Summer of 2024. Katie holds degrees in vocal performance from the University of Northern Colorado and San José State University. She currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her horn-playing husband Mike Walker, opera-loving dog Jake, and their daughter.