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, is a tireless proponent of the viola in jazz and new chamber music. In addition to creating new works and performance opportunities in unusual venues, like her Drive-By Violas inside a Boston fruit stand and a bus kiosk, she has been a professional symphony musician, a member of the ground-breaking Turtle Island String Quartet, a concert soloist, a belly dancer, a police finger-printer, a strolling, rhinestone-studded “big violinist” for royalty, a non-denominational wedding officiant, a student of Italian, Tango Nuevo, Persian, and Roma music and a composer and performer for chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, and dance. Her compositions are performed and broadcast internationally including by the Ahn Trio, David Parsons Dance Troupe, the Omaha Symphony, Boston Chamber Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Tassajara Symphony, the Mill Valley Philharmonic, and Orchestra Rosario in Argentina. Vlazville Music publishes and distributes her sheet music and recording.
She is a founding faculty member of the John Adams Young Composer Program at the Crowden School, an approved Teaching Artist for the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, and has taught chamber music composition to youth since 1998, when she became a “Composer in the Schools” for the American Composers Forum-San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. She conducts her clinics around the country, “My Goldfish Died-Blues for Strings” and “Composing Together”-a collaborative classroom composition project that has introduced over 750 new hands-on “composers” to the creative process and created over 80 new works for string quartet. Her CD, “Add Viola and Stir”, featuring some of her jazz and classical chamber works for viola was released Dec. 2010.
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.
Short Bio for press releases and program notes
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, a non-denominational wedding officiant, a player of Tango Nuevo, Persian, and Roma music and a composer for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, and dance. Her most recent recorded works appear on “Add Viola and Stir”, three 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 at the Crowden School and offers her workshops, “Composing Together” and “My Goldfish Died-Blues for Strings” to schools and youth groups nation-wide.