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Katherine Young (musician)

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Katherine Young
Young in 2014
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Bassoonist
  • composer
EmployerEmory University
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (2021)
Musical career
GenresElectro-acoustic music[1]
InstrumentBassoon

Katherine Young is an American bassoonist and composer. She released her solo album Further Secret Origins in 2009 and is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. She is also a professor at Emory University.

Biography

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Katherine Young studied classical music with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Carl Nitchie,[2] and she studied comparative literature and bassoon at Oberlin College and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music,[3] graduating in 2003.[4] She later obtained her MA in Composition from Wesleyan University, where she studied under Anthony Braxton,[3][2] and her DMA in Composition from the Bienen School of Music;[5] her doctoral dissertation is Nothing Is as It Appears: Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J.[6]

Young's music involves electroacoustic music and sonic art, and she also plays as a bassoonist in her work.[3] She recorded with Braxton in an album released in 2008.[4] In 2019, she was the featured composer for the sixth season of Basscon's Wasteland festival, with one of her pieces being Arthur Russell's Hiding Your Present From You (1986).[7] Aaron Cohen of the Chicago Tribune noted that she "thrives in unexpected terrain" and that "her basic impulse remains straight-forward".[2] Tamzin Elliott of San Francisco Classical Voice said of Young: "Her vocabulary of string techniques — bowing on the body of the instrument, grinding the bow into the string, playing behind the bridge, etc. — was markedly uniform between the pieces, to the point where I wondered about the intentionality of this similarity."[7]

In 2009, her solo album Further Secret Origins was released.[8][9] She later did another album in 2012, Pretty Monsters, for her quartet of the same name.[10] Young said that solo recordings are "brutal", noting they leave her with only a sound engineer to record with.[4] She performed as bassoonist in Jessica Pavone's 2024 album Clamor [de].[11]

Originally teaching at Berklee College of Music and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she later became Assistant Professor of Composition at Emory University.[3] In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[12]

Young has been based in Chicago.[7]

References

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  1. ^ "PSNY: Katherine Young Biography". European American Music Distributors Company. Retrieved April 18, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Cohen, Aaron (May 8, 2015). "Bassoonist explores in unexpected directions". Chicago Tribune – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b c d "Katherine Young". Emory University. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  4. ^ a b c Waxman, Ken (February 23, 2009). "Katherine Young / Anthony Braxton / Taylor Ho Bynum / Mary Halvorson". JazzWord. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  5. ^ "Alumna Katherine Young named Guggenheim Fellow". Bienen School of Music. April 19, 2021. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  6. ^ Young, Katherine (2017). Nothing Is as It Appears: Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J (DMA thesis). Northwestern University. doi:10.21985/n24r1q. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  7. ^ a b c Elliott, Tamzin (May 7, 2019). "Katherine Young Uses Noise to Teach Feeling". San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  8. ^ "Further Secret Origins - Katherine Young". AllMusic. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  9. ^ "Katherine Young: Further Secret Origins". All About Jazz (in Italian). October 13, 2010. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  10. ^ Collins, Troy (December 1, 2012). "Katherine Young's Pretty Monsters: Pretty Monsters". All About Jazz. Retrieved April 17, 2025.
  11. ^ Ingalls, Chris (October 4, 2023). "Jessica Pavone Interprets Womens' Work Through the Ages". PopMatters.
  12. ^ "Katherine Young". Guggenheim Fellowship. Retrieved April 16, 2025.
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