Critics Say…
“extemporaneous mastery rare, perhaps unique, in the annals of the viola.”
-Leonard Feather, jazz historian and Los Angeles Times critic
“stunningly talented and imaginative…”
_-San Francisco Examiner” _
“…contagious vitality…”
-San Jose Mercury News
“a promising composer…”
-Jazz Times
“…a relaxed and highly professional air…”
-Billboard
Biography
Katrina Wreede, composer and violist, has been a professional symphony musician, a jazz violist, a member of the ground-breaking Turtle Island String Quartet, a concert soloist, a belly dancer, a police finger-printer, a rhinestone-studded “continental” violinist for royalty, celebrities, and politicians, a non-denominational wedding officiant, a player of Tango Nuevo, Persian, Roma (gypsy) and Central European music and a composer for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, and dance, sometimes collaborating with other artists to create works about social injustice. She also created and performs with her “Living Wind Chimes”, an audience-interactive set of brass chimes that she sets up in unusual indoor and outdoor venues including Berkeley Botanical Gardens, Oakland Federal Building, and the Mendocino Headlands. Her works are distributed by MMB Music and performed internationally, including “Mr. Twitty’s Chair”, performed regularly by the Ahn Trio and the David Parsons Dance Group. Her most recent recorded works appear on two Vox Novus’ “60×60” CDs and the Pegasus Quartet’s “Healing Heart” CD.
She is a founding faculty member of the John Adams Young Composer Program and has taught advanced composition to exceptional youth musicians from 1998-2004 and 2007-2009 for the American Composers Forum. She created and ran both Sierra Jazz Society’s Junior Jazz Camp and the Junior Composer program for the Berkeley Symphony, co-directed the Crowden School’s Alternative Strings Program with Daryl Silberman and conducts clinics and workshops on improvisation and composition around the country, including at Boston Conservatory, Cal Tech’s Prepatory High School, University of Colorado at Boulder, Berklee College of Music, the Montana Music Teachers Association, and Nevada County and San Francisco Unified School Districts’ teacher training. The Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission has identified her as a qualified and approved “Teaching Artist” for 2007-2009. She teaches in the San Francisco Community Music Center’s Comprehensive Musicianship Program, a free honors program for students identified musically gifted from age 8-18. She also has a several year relationship with the middle and high school students in the Bronxville schools in New York, working via email and in person with 60+ students on many different projects, including Fall 2008 “Composing for Public Service Announcements”.
She has written works for the AXIS Dance Troupe, the San Jose Chamber and San Jose Chamber Youth Orchestras, the Colorado Chamber Players, the Tassajara Symphony, the Pegasus Quartet, the Menlo Brass Quintet and Mills College, “Music for People to Play”, and many works for her composer-collaborative group, the Serafine Trio. She is a contributing author to the American String Teachers Association book, “Playing and Teaching the Viola” and has contributed articles to the ASTA Journal, Journal of the American Viola Society, Strings Magazine, and other music-oriented periodicals and newsletters. She also wrote a handbook for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of American Composers Forum on teaching composition to teenagers.
Recently, she created a comprehensive 5-year composition curriculum for grades 8-12 with Dr. Denise Lutter, a work for harp and viola for the American Composers Forum Composer in the Schools program, and a 30-minute work for the San Jose String Quartet that includes narration and illustrations based on the Pecos Bill story. She created another new work on a “Bugs of Aesop’s Fables” theme for the Colorado Chamber Players, a new flute trio commissioned for a college graduation, and 19 string quartets for five schools as part of her Composing Together project collaborating with the Del Sol Quartet. 2010 includes a new work for the Mill Valley Philharmonic, a concerto grosso with three soloist/composers, each writing one movement, a collaboration with pianist, Alexis Alrich and cellist, Moses Sedler.