Mike Kelley, viola, has received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School. His teachers have included Lenny Matczynski, Jeffrey Irvine and Karen Tuttle. A prize winner at the Primrose International Viola Competition at the age of 18, Mike is currently violist of the Apple Hill String Quartet and has been an artist-in-residence at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music since 1996. For three months of the summer he teaches and coaches chamber music to participants of all ages and levels at Apple Hill's 110-acre facility in the Monadnock region of Southern New Hampshire.

Through Apple Hill's innovative Playing for Peace Program, which promotes friendship, understanding, and basic human contact between musicians in areas of the world beleaguered by conflict or lack of resources, he has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, Europe, Russia, Asia and the US performing and conducting residencies at universities, US embassies, and for music schools and organizations.

An active composer, Mike has been a Teaching Fellow in Electronic Music at the Juilliard School, has written music for everyone from Madison Square Garden to Yale University, and has given frequent lecture/demonstrations on the subject of creating electronic music.  As disco-pop singer Kelley Polar, he has performed at major European pop-rock music festivals and in club venues worldwide, collaborating with groups such as the Junior Boys, Metro Area and Bomb the Bass. His albums have recently been selected for the "best of the decade" lists of music magazines Stylus and Fact, and and have been highly recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Spin, and the Guardian.

Mike grew up on the East Side, went to Martin Luther King Elementary, Nathaniel Greene Middle School and Classical High. He now lives on Federal Hill.