The curious timbres, expressive noises, and kinetic structures of Katherine Young’s electroacoustic music explore the dramatic physicality of sound, shifting interpersonal dynamics, and associations with the familiar and the strange. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Spektral Quartet, Weston Olencki, Fonema Consort, and others have commissioned her work. She has also worked closely with Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, WasteLAnd and RAGE Thormbones, Distractfold Ensemble’s Linda Jankowska, Callithumpian Ensemble, Lucy Dehgrae, and Yarn/Wire. Her eight-channel outdoor sound installation, Resonance and the Inhibition of, was exhibited as part of the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art’s Chicago Sound Show in Fall 2019.
As a bassoonist and improviser, she amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She often performs as a soloist, and her debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). Collaboration is central to her practice, and she also regularly performs in ad hoc improvised groups and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton) and Architeuthis Walks on Land (duo with Amy Cimini). She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her quartet Pretty Monsters self-titled debut, a duo recording with Anthony Braxton, and the multi-movement work Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight (Parlour Tapes+), created with violinist Austin Wulliman.
As a scholar, she researches the incorporation of idiosyncratic electronics and improvisation in contemporary notated music. She has written about Anthony Braxton’s operatic work, in particular.
She taught composition, electronic music, and improvisation at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Berklee College of Music, before joining the faculty of Emory University in 2020.
She has deep ties to Chicago’s creative music communities, having lived and made music there for many significant years. She is now based in Atlanta.