Katherine Young (musician)
American bassoonist and composer
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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.
Katherine Young | |
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 Young in 2014 | |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations |
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| Employer | Emory University |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Electro-acoustic music[1] |
| Instrument | Bassoon |
Biography
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.[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]