Katherine Young’s debut bassoon record, Further Secret Origins (Porter Records, 2009) garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”), Downbeat ("seriously bold leaps for the bassoon"), and elsewhere. Since that acoustic recording, Katherine has gone on to develop an electro-acoustic approach to her instrument, using amplification and pedals to enhance the acoustic power of the bassoon, bring out interior resonances, and create monolithic soundscapes.
“Mycorrhizae” is a series of (mostly) solo pieces. Collaborators include: Olivia De Prato, Patrick Stadler, alejandro t. acierto, Elena Cholakova & A. Martinez, and Seth Parker Woods.
Mycorrhizae are the vast underground fungal networks that work symbiotically with the root systems of trees and other plants to, among other things, share nutrients throughout the forest. Each of the “Mycorrhizae” pieces has been commissioned individually, but I compose formal and sonic connections across and through the pieces, sharing electronic materials and instrumental motives, imagining structures that extend beyond the double bar line of a single solo. For me, these structural relationships musically and poetically enrich each piece, and I draw inspiration in these efforts from the “subterranean networks of mycorrhizae” that act like “fungal bridges between the individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected”[1] via their root systems.
[1] Kimmerman, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Sam Scranton and Katherine Young make music together as Beautifulish. We fuse free improvisation with composed musical material. Tightly interwoven gestures smudge into expansive textures. Rainbows of noise produced through haptic and breathy friction create proximity and space, timbre and harmony, pitch and rhythm. We use electronics and amplification to augment their primary instruments: Young plays bassoon; Scranton, percussion. The result is an integrated sound world that exists as its own beautifulish thing.
BIOMES is platform for collective composition and an ongoing project for improvising performers using electroacoustic sound, light, video, movement, set design, or other means.
An in-progress taxonomy and a still-accruing assemblage, BIOMES collects photographs, texts, musical notation, sound files, videos, drawings, code, links, maps, statistics, field notes, and other materials relating to magical(ly) (sur)real biomes.
A biome /ˈbaɪoʊm/ is a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics due to the environment in which they exist.
BOUNDARYMIND is an evening-length electroacoustic sound piece and aggregating installation that explores and transgresses the geographical, cultural, psychological, and musical boundaries that impact how we share our past, present, and future selves with others.
Developed collaboratively over the course of eight years by Linda Jankowska and Katherine Young, the project will also present video art by Kera Mackenzie and a performative sculpture by Molly Roth Scranton. Boundarymind’s production partners are Experimental Sound Studio, 6018 North, RomanSusan and P.O.Box Collective.
The complete work premieres on June 3rd, 2022 at 6018 North, with a repeat performance on June 5th. Two public performances will include original, collaboratively composed music presented within a multimedia environment. Throughout the performance space we will install objects and materials - ceramic pots, plastic toys, wooden spoons, pine straw, sugar packets, and other things - chosen for their personal significance and power to evoke memories of places from our childhoods. For Linda, the space is a cottage in rural Poland where she spent formative years. For Katie, it is her early childhood home in Mississippi. On a series of visits in 2015, we gathered objects and sound recordings from these places.
The public will also be invited to contribute objects and sounds to this project. We will host community recording events at 6018 North, as well as at RomanSusan and P.O.Box Collective. We will incorporate the recordings we make of the objects people share into a second version of the installation, which we will present at ESS in 2022.
Working on this project, we have become acutely aware of how sharing the history and the personal significance of the objects we are performing with deepens our connection, allowing us to build the trust we need to make music together. Our collaborative process and boundarymind’s unique soundworld became charged with emotional significance and shared meaning. Thus, in this project the unexpectedly musical sounds of household objects allow us to investigate the formation of bonds forged by individuals from different backgrounds. Taking our collaborative musical relationship as a starting point, we will invite listeners and other makers to contribute to the work, sharing memories and sounds from their pasts, as well as their aspirations for our collective future.
This project was supported, in part, by Chicago’s DCASE, Arts Midwest, CeReNeM, Roman Susan, PO Box Collective, 6018|North, Emory Arts, and Experimental Sound Studio.
LISTEN / WATCH >>> The Formalist quartet performs bow breath crow for string trio, which developed in tandem with boundarmind and in collaboration with Linda Jankowska.
a monodrama for soprano, 9 players, lost objects, and electronics
a cycle of concert works:
where the moss glows for octet (2016), commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW
Amelia Earhart and the Queen of Spades (2016), commissioned by Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, developed with Nico Couck and Jesse Langan
just water, no lemon (2016), commissioned and premiered by Third Coast Percussion —> video of premiere performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ML91sRr4s
These concert works become source material for a monodrama, When stranger things happen, commissioned by Ensemble Dal Niente featuring soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, which premiered in October 2017, at the Edge Theater, Chicago. (Read this blog post for more!)
When stranger things happen (2017) - Katherine Young
monodrama for ten players, lost objects, electronics, and amplification
produced by Ensemble Dal Niente, as part of the production Piece Her Together
Overture: Before / The Initial Descent
Scene I: Immediately After
Scene II: Alone, Untethered (Recitative)
Scene III: On the Case (Aria)
Scene IV: The Second Descent (Recitative-Aria-Reciative)
Scene V: Dancing
Scene VI: Reassembling (Recitative-Aria)
When stranger things happen is about mysteries: of things we've lost, things we make, and who we become along the way.
This project is also about collaboration. It's an attempt to embed a collaborative practice—one that involves sharing stories with each other—into the music itself.
This undertaking was inspired by Kelly Link’s short story “The Girl Detective,” which I read as a creative coming of age story. It’s also a noir meditation on loss, myths of femininity, and the power of the imagination. The girl detective’s investigations take her up trees; into dreams—hers and other people’s; and down into an underworld where lost things accumulate and stranger things happen.
Link’s story contains many lists...of misplaced, lost, found, and untethered objects. Compiling these, I began thinking about things that I’ve lost—specific objects with or without sentimental value. Recalling relationships, people, qualities, and perspectives that have slipped away, I added objects representing these to my list. Expanding further, I asked my musical collaborators, “What’s something you’ve lost?” I added all these to Link’s tallies, and the important and unimportant lost things lost became potential tools for making sound.
Here’s a short list, compiled with Amanda, Jesse, Nico, Dave, Sean, Rob, Michael, Greg, and Eliza, some of which made it into our piece: underwear, one shoe (left), socks, retainers, Amelia Earhart, glasses (prescription), my breath, Grandpa Burt, bobby pins, a small Japanese bell, a 2011 Honda CRV, a tea set, my umbrella, small vintage Jell-O molds, all my CDs, keys, the Queen of Spades from a deck of cards, cell phones (multiple), pins (jewelry), wedding rings, 7th grade HW, a $.50 coin, her Mother, a gold chain, my wallet.
The mystery of the objects (Why they are significant? How were they lost? What strange things happen when they are found? What music can they make together) becomes one of the three layers of the narrative of When stranger thing happens. The first is Link's story, with its noir atmosphere, mysteries embedded within mysteries, and coming of age story. This creative, feminist coming-of-age story was a personal narrative that Amanda De Boer Bartlett, Emmi Hilger, and I could deeply relate to from our own experiences. Thus, the third layer becomes about the performers ourselves.
Audio: https://dalniente.bandcamp.com/releases
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM5c9VLnRrw
For scores or more information, please contact me.
Developed in collaboration with violinist Austin Wulliman, Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight is an installation-performance work comprising six pieces for prepared instruments, electronics, and chamber orchestra. These compositions are performed amidst an eight-channel installation. Sound sculptures, listening stations, visual installations, and projections further animate the performance space.
The project was released as a stereo recording and a 4-cassette DIY installation kit via Parlour Tapes+ with art by Molly Roth.
Listen to the all seven movements.
Read New Music Box's review.
For scores or more information, please contact me.
Longtime musical collaborators, Jessica Pavone (viola) and Katherine Young (bassoon) weave their unique solo languages together into an intensely focused and richly dynamic shared music in this new duo project.
Throughout their 20-year history, Pavone and Young have presented music together at venues such as Roulette, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, and the Sunview Luncheonette in Brooklyn; Eye Drum in Atlanta; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel; and others.
ABOUT JESSICA
Violist and composer, Jessica Pavone, explores the tactile and sensory experience of music as a vibration-based medium. Inspired by processes centered on intuition and instinct, her music channels these ideas by focusing on how music feels when played and heard, integrating her experiences as an instrumentalist into works that transcend time. Although her primary training was in classical music at the Hartt School of Music (B.M. Music Ed. ’98) and Brooklyn College (M.M. Music Composition ’07), Pavone has dedicated her practice to exploring alternative avenues for creative musical expression and “has made a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log). Pavone’s music has been premiered at prominent NYC venues such as: Abrons Art Center, ISSUE Project Room, the Kitchen, the Noguchi Museum, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and the Socrates Sculpture Park. Grants and Commissions: NYSCA (2024), Queens Arts Council (2024, 2022, 2020), NYFA NYC Women’s Fund (2023), MATA Festival (2023), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Emergency Grant, 2021), New Music USA (2015), Tri-Centric Foundation (2015), Experiments in Opera (2013), and the Jerome Foundation (2011). Residencies and Fellowships: Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize (2024), Marble House (2024), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center (2024), I-Park Foundation (2024), Loghaven (2023), Ragdale (2022), and Ucross (2020).
ABOUT KATHERINE
Katherine Young makes electroacoustic music and sonic art using expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures. Her work has been recognized by awards and fellowships including a Fromm Foundation at Harvard University Commission and the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition.
Relationship building and ecological thinking are central to her practice. She has worked closely with Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, Linda Jankowska, Olivia De Prato, Weston Olencki, and others. The LAPhil, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and others have commissioned her music. The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art and the Science Gallery Atlanta have commissioned her installation work.
As a bassoonist and improviser, Katherine amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She performs as a soloist, in ad hoc improvised groups, and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton). She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her quartet Pretty Monsters self-titled debut and a duo recording with Anthony Braxton.
Katherine has deep ties to Chicago’s creative music communities. She is now based in Atlanta, where she teaches composition, electronic music, and improvisation at Emory University.
Sawing, sputtering, gurgling and wailing, Architeuthis Walks on Land is every bit the displaced and terrifying cephalopod that the name suggests. Violist Amy Cimini and bassoonist Katherine Young have been performing together as Architeuthis Walks on Land since 2003. Their three albums evidence the duo’s particular ways of crafting their improvised materials into sophisticated structures to capture the compositional, timbral and expressive breadth of this uncommon coupling. Cimini and Young lunge and flutter through their materials with the intuition and energy of constant discovery.
Natura Naturans and The Surveyors are available from Carrier Records. The self-titled debut album is available from SET projects.
The four-piece Pretty Monsters drifts and lurches between doomy songs, noisy improv, and eerie experimental chamber music. Katherine Young composes specifically for the group. which features Erica Dicker on violin, Owen Stewart-Robertson on electric guitar, Mike Pride on drums and percussion, and KAY on bassoon+electronics. Public Eyesore released Pretty Monsters's debut full-length in 2012.
You can listen at katherineyoung.bandcamp.com or publiceyesore.com.
Photo by Peter Gannushkin, downtownmusic.net.
I have recorded and toured with Anthony Braxton, performing in Moscow and Italy with the Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet, Poland and Philadelphia with the Falling River Quartet, as well as recording in quartets and duos and with the Tri-Centric Orchestra.
My dissertation for my DMA at Northwestern University - Nothing Is As It Appears: Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J - provides an analysis, interpretation, and contextualization of Braxton’s operatic project. Please email me if you are interested. The document is available via ProQuest and here: https://arch.library.northwestern.edu/concern/generic_works/vq27zn57c?locale=en
Dissertation Abstract
Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J, part of an ambitious planned “complex” of 36 one-act operas, premiered in 2014. Very little writing—anecdotal, journalistic, nor scholarly—exists on these works, so this research provides a critical introduction, contextualizing the operas within Braxton’s oeuvre and discussing the works’ fundamental musical materials and organization. Examples from Trillium J illuminate general characteristics of the composer’s approach to operatic form. This document analyzes the composer’s approach to narrative time and place, characterization, and the relationship between the libretti and Braxton’s 1985 philosophical treatise.[1] This research also offers a reading of how Braxton’s operas may be understood as “ritual music,” the designation he gives them. This analysis draws on religious studies and anthropological theories of ritualization,[2] as well as studies of innovations in modernist theater. [3]
I suggest that Trillium’s potential for ritualization exists, in part, because of the nuanced way the Western operatic, the American experimental, and improvised music traditions intersect and inform Braxton’s work. Also important are the frustrated attempts at community formation in the operas’ stories and the significance of self-realization for the participants that motivates Braxton’s compositional approach. Ultimately, this document proposes that the collaborative practices of realizing these music-theater works is central to these processes of ritualization. Therefore, in addition to studies of the libretto and score, this research draws upon the author’s first-hand experience of performing in the opera’s orchestra and interviews with the composer, significant collaborators, and experienced performers.
[1] Braxton, Tri-Axium Writings
[2] Specifically the works of Catherine Bell, Richard Schechner, and Victor Turner.
[3] Specifically the work of Anthony Sheppard.
for trombone and electronics
Slide hits, trigger smacks, gasping inhales, thuds, and pops...puddles and crumbs wires up the trombone in a loving embrace of the byproducts, side effects, and detritus of instrumental performance. This piece was developed in close collaboration with and is dedicated to Weston Olencki.
for two sopranos, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone cassette players & electronics
for Fonema
Master of Disguises utilizes a short piece of text excerpted from Kelly Link’s short story “The Girl Detective” as source material. This story explores, among other things, the inner, imagined life of a girl whose mother has disappeared or possibly died. Master of Disguises is about searching for something you cannot find, for a sound which is unstable or elusive. Commissioned by Fonema Consort, Master of Disguises asks the soprano vocalists to perform percussive gestures on small portable cassette players: stopping, ejecting, rewinding, fast forwarding, and sometimes playing a cassette tape. (2014)
For the score or more information, please contact me.
