Photo Credit: Martin Kladis

Composer and bassoonist Katherine Young creates acoustic and electro-acoustic music that uses curious timbres, expressive noises, and kinetic structures to explore suspended time, genre fiction, the communication of ensemble energies, and the tension between the familiar and the strange. Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times described Katherine’s Inside UFO 53-32, as performed by the Flux Quartet, as a “raw, wailing, coloristic piece” with an “organic sweep.”

Recently, Katherine received a commission to write a new piece for the String Orchestra of Brooklyn: Inhabitation of Time premiered in March 2011. She also received Issue Project Room’s Emerging Artists Commission, premiering a new work for mixed ensemble and TimeTable percussion trio. In 2010, Katherine composed music for choreographer Daria Fain’s piece TARGET: Furnace, which premiered at Dance New Amsterdam, and the piece will be remounted in October 2011 at the Chocolate Factory in Queens, NY.

Katherine’s debut bassoon record, Further Secret Origins, was released in 2009 by Porter Records, garnering praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). She regularly performs and tours as a soloist, using pedals and amplification. Katherine also leads the band Pretty Monsters, a quartet of bassoon, violin, guitar, and percussion that currently has a record in production.

Katherine has toured with Anthony Braxton, and she has recorded with Hans Joachim Irmler from Faust and F.M. Einheit from Einsturzende Neubauten. She is also a founding member of chamber collective Till by Turning, and she performs regularly in the improvising duo Architeuthis Walks on Land, who released Natura Naturans on Carrier Records in 2010. Katherine is also a core member of the chamber-pop quartet the Fancy.

Other projects past and present include: British rockers the Nightingales; Jason Ajemian’s Who Cares How Long You Sink; the trio Civil War; Jacob Wick’s A Mown Lawn; Leah Paul's Bike Lane; Chicago-based pop band Roommate; and collaborations with musicians such as Jim Altieri, Tim Daisy, Peter Evans, Guillermo Gregorio, Mary Halvorson, Andrew Lafkas, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jeff Parker, Jessica Pavone, Dan Peck, Mike Pride, Tomeka Reid, Weasel Walter, and Jonathan Zorn.

At Oberlin College and Conservatory, Katherine studied bassoon performance and comparative literature; she completed her masters in composition at Wesleyan University, working with Anthony Braxton, Ron Kuivila, and Alvin Lucier. Katherine is a DMA candidate in composition at Northwestern University.