Katt Hernandez
Encyclopedia
Katt Hernandez is a violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist living in Stockholm, Sweden with strong connection to Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

 and Baltimore, Maryland. Katt's violin playing employs many virtuostic extended techniques, as well as microtones. Her influences range a vast gamut of music, and her own work is entirely improvised. She has been noted for her unique playing in many publications and on-line review sites, including Cadence Magazine, Signal to Noise, Arthur Magazine and All About Jazz
All About Jazz
All About Jazz is a leading jazz music website for enthusiasts and industry professionals based in Philadelphia in the United States.Founded by Michael Ricci in 1995, the Web-Site is maintained by a volunteer staff of writers, editors, and musicians, and provides coverage of all genres of jazz from...

.

As a teenager, she attended Community High School, an alternative, experimental school that was in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...

. She was admitted to the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 in 1992, and was among the first to graduate from the school with a degree in improvised music
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...

. There she worked extensively with the Creative Arts Orchestra, with her mentor Ed Sarath. She also studied composition with George Balch Wilson
George Balch Wilson
George Balch Wilson is an American composer who is particularly known for his contributions to electronic music. In 1955 he won the Prix de Rome for composition. He taught for more than 30 years on the faculty of the University of Michigan where he notably founded and directed the school's...

 and Evan Chambers
Evan Chambers
Evan Chambers is a composer, traditional Irish fiddler, and Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan. He received a Doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan...

, as well as jazz with Donald Walden. She also played in several jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 groups in the area, and collaborated with Dr. Arwulf Arwulf and Frank Pahl.

She arrived in Boston in 1997, and quickly became a part of the city's rich landscape of improvised music
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....

. She regularly sat in on classes and sessions at the New England Conservatory in her first years in town, where she met her next mentor, Joe Maneri
Joe Maneri
Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri , was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son....

. There she also began her long collaboration with pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 and accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

 player Jonathan Vincent. She began working extensively with performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

ists, dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

rs, and video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

ists as improvisers. In addition to performances in the city's ever-dwindling supply of underground art-spaces, as well as appearances as a guest artist at more prominent venues, she began to participate in flamboyant street theater antics.

In the last thirteen years she appeared as a performer throughout the Boston improvised music scene weekly, and in many venues along the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...

. She has also appeared on a number of festivals of improvised and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

, including High Zero, Autumn Uprising, Creative Soundspace, Montreaux-Detroit Jazz, Boston CyberArts and Improvised and Otherwise. She has appeared in performance with Joe Maneri
Joe Maneri
Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri , was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son....

, Joe Morris
Joe Morris
Joe Morris is the name of:* Joe Morris , British film writer, producer and director. * Joe Morris , American jazz guitarist * Joe Morris , American studio drummer...

, Steve Norton
Steve Norton
Steve 'Knocker' Norton is an English former rugby league footballer. He represented Yorkshire, England and Great Britain and played club football for Castleford before moving to Hull, and Wakefield Trinity. Norton was widely regarded as one of the greatest exponents of the game, with a distinctive...

, Matt Samolis, Hans Rickheit
Hans Rickheit
-Profile:Rickheit was originally a resident of Ashburnham, Massachusetts. He originally self-published minicomics which presented dark vignettes and short stories, many of them directly inspired by dreams. He also produced short films....

, Jack Wright
Jack Wright
Jack Wright was the hero of a popular series of Victorian science fiction dime novels and story papers written by Luis Senarens, the so-called "American Jules Verne". A few stories are also credited to Francis W. Doughty...

, Zack Fuller, Oolanda Denosky-Smart, Saul Levine, Nicole Bindler, Andrew Neumann, Eric Rosenthal
Eric Rosenthal
Eric Rosenthal may refer to:*Eric Rosenthal , American human rights supporter and author*Eric Rosenthal , South African historian and author...

, Walter Horn, Dave Gross, Allysa Cardone, Tatsuya Nakatani, James Coleman
James Coleman
James Coleman may refer to:*James P. Coleman , Governor of Mississippi*James Smoot Coleman , American political scientist*James Samuel Coleman , American sociologist*James Coleman , Irish artist...

, John Voigt, Joe Burgio, Walter Wright
Walter Wright
Walter Wright was an English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-fast bowler...

, Dan DeChellis, John Berndt
John Berndt
John Berndt is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland who is best known as an extended-technique experimental saxophonist and electronic musician. He participated in the second wave of the neoism cultural movement, the first wave having consisted of Monty Cantsin, Istvan Kantor, and...

, Adam James Wilson, Marc Bison, and many, many others.

In addition to her extensive work as an improviser, Katt Hernandez has also appeared with the Eurasia Ensemble, Los Bilbilicos, and various Greek
Music of Greece
The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts: Greek traditional music and Byzantine music, with more eastern sounds...

 and Turkish
Music of Turkey
The music of Turkey includes diverse elements ranging from Central Asian folk music and has many copies and references of Byzantine music, Greek music, Ottoman music, Persian music, Balkan music, as well as more modern European and American popular music influences...

 traditional musicians. She has brought the influence of Arabic and Balkan music to her own work. She has also worked on early jazz, old tyme, and parlour treacle with Matt Samolis, himself an accomplished free improviser – in their duo Lindy's Radio. They played music from before 1937, prior to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart was a noted American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first woman to receive the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean...

. She was half of the duo Doktor Selenium and Madame Margo, a performance art project depicting the actions of a frightening cartoon character and his trumpet fiddling accomplise. And she occasionally worked with Beat Circus
Beat Circus
Beat Circus is a band from Boston, Massachusetts fronted by multi-instrumentalist / singer-songwriter Brian Carpenter, who has been its only constant member since its inception.-Musical style:...

.

In 1999, Katt became involved in the organization of the Zeitgeist Gallery. She produced and promoted concerts there and in other venues for scores of other free improvisers. She also became an advocate for the right of individuals to make music and run Art Spaces without harassment from city officials and real estate developers in the rapidly gentrifying Boston community- writing letters, appearing at town meetings, and participating in pointed merry pranks to champion the cause. And she spent a year helping to bring forth a weekly Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance...

 meal from a kitchen on the gallery's third floor. Katt produced over one hundred concerts of new music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...

 at the Gallery, as well as many in the Boston area. In 2006 the Gallery was shut down in a hostile takeover by its landlord. So Katt left Boston in search of less Hostile surroundings.

She moved to Philadelphia for three years, where she immediately became a performer on the Bowerbird
Bowerbird
Bowerbirds make up the bird family Ptilonorhynchidae. The family has 20 species in eight genera. These are medium-sized passerines, ranging from the Golden Bowerbird to the Great Bowerbird...

, Ars Nova
Ars nova
Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377...

, Soundfield and SciFi Philly series' of improvised music. She was also a performer and occasional performer with the West Philadelphia Orchestra. And she was on the board of the Crossroads Music series, which brings performers from many different music cultures to West Philly. She also toured the United States and Canada with Vashti Bunyan
Vashti Bunyan
Vashti Bunyan is an English singer-songwriter. In 1970, Bunyan released her first album, Just Another Diamond Day. The album sold very few copies, and Bunyan, discouraged, abandoned her musical career...

 and Veitiver, joining the Welcome to Dreamland concert at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

,produced by David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...

.

In summer of 2008, she traveled to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 to play on the Hagenfesten festival, and met her partner Bure Holmbäck there. While she waited for her residency permission to join him there, she returned to Boston to collaborate with Joe Morris
Joe Morris
Joe Morris is the name of:* Joe Morris , British film writer, producer and director. * Joe Morris , American jazz guitarist * Joe Morris , American studio drummer...

, Junko Simons, Luther Gray, Matt Samolis, Steve Norton
Steve Norton
Steve 'Knocker' Norton is an English former rugby league footballer. He represented Yorkshire, England and Great Britain and played club football for Castleford before moving to Hull, and Wakefield Trinity. Norton was widely regarded as one of the greatest exponents of the game, with a distinctive...

, Bowed Metal and Glass, Joe Burgio and others. She performed at X-Fest
X-Fest
X-Fest is an annual music festival held each year in various venues throughout the U.S. by Clear Channel Communications radio stations. It features alternative rock, hard rock, heavy metal, grunge, and industrial rock bands....

 at the 119 Gallery in Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...

, and at Frantasia in Maine. Finally, in spring of 2010, she moved to Stockholm. She has already become engaged with the improvised and electronic music communities, and continues to perform, compose and scheme.

Discography

Unlovely- solo (LP)-Ehse Records, 2010

Modern Antique- with Steve Norton- Means of Production
Means of Production
Means Of Production is a compilation of Aim's early 12" and EP releases, recorded between 1995 and 1998.-Track listing:# "Loop Dreams" – 5:30# "Diggin' Dizzy" – 5:33 # "Let the Funk Ride" – 5:11 # "Original Stuntmaster" – 6:33...

, 2010

Psychotic Quartet: Gliomas- with Michael Evans
Michael Evans
Michael James "Mickey" Evans is an English-born Irish former footballer. He spent the majority of his career at home-town club Plymouth Argyle, with notable success, including two Football League titles....

, Daniel Blacksberg, and Evan Lipson- Fire Museum
Fire Museum
Fire museums, also known as firefighting museums are prevalent throughout the world. In Wales there is currently a project to open a national fire museum based on the collection of fire engines owned by the charity WAFERS . As at July 2009 a site had been identified and active fund-raising is...

, 2010

Eddy Dyer:Teardrops made of Melted Crayon- as a supporting artist-

Flight- solo in collaboration with artist Erik Ruin- Desperate Comodities, 2009

Hisswig-duo with Evan Lipson (Mini CD)- self released,2008(available from Evan)

West Philadelphia Orchestra- as a supporting artist/composer- West Philadelphia Orchestra recordings, 2008

Damon and Naomi
Damon and Naomi
Damon & Naomi are an American dream pop/folk-rock duo formed in 1991 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, formerly of Galaxie 500.-History:After Galaxie 500 completed a tour of the US supporting The Cocteau Twins, guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham quit the band, forcing the cancellation of an...

:Within these Walls- as a supporting artist- Damon and Naomi
Damon and Naomi
Damon & Naomi are an American dream pop/folk-rock duo formed in 1991 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, formerly of Galaxie 500.-History:After Galaxie 500 completed a tour of the US supporting The Cocteau Twins, guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham quit the band, forcing the cancellation of an...

, 2007

Ex Reverie
Ex Reverie
Ex Reverie is the Philly-based, solo project of folk musician Gillian Chadwick.Debut album The Door Into Summer features the production and musical collaboration of Greg Weeks and his wife Jessica. The act is signed to Greg and Jessica's Language of Stone record label...

: The Door into Summer- as a supporting artist- Language of Stone, 2007

Noa Babayoff: From a Window to a Wall- as a supporting artist- Language of Stone, 2007

Jaimie Mclaughlin: mrs. hippy- Experimental Records, 2007

Assif Tsahar
Assif Tsahar
Assif Tsahar is an Israeli tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist. He has lived in New York City since 1990.He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Butch Morris, William Parker, Mat Maneri, Hamid Drake, Peter Kowald, Susie Ibarra, Rashied Ali, Warren Smith, Wilbur Morris, Le Quan Ninh, John Tchicai,...

:Solitude- with Assif Tshar, Tatsuya Nakatani, Audrey Chen, Ljova and Jean Cook- Hopscotch Records, 2004

Seven Gingambobs- with Marc Bisson- self-released, 2003

Dan Dechellis Chamber Quartet: Making the Argument for the Line- with Dan Dechellis, Anita Dechellis, and Gary Fieldman- Sachimay, 2003

Dan Dechellis: Chamber Music- with Dan Dechellis, Anita Dechellis, James Coleman
James Coleman
James Coleman may refer to:*James P. Coleman , Governor of Mississippi*James Smoot Coleman , American political scientist*James Samuel Coleman , American sociologist*James Coleman , Irish artist...

 and Gary Fieldman- Sachimay, 2002

Paolo Angelli and Friends at High Zero
High Zero
High Zero is an annual festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music hosted in Baltimore, Maryland, US starting in 1999, and is one of the largest Free Music festivals in the US, if not the world. It is hosted by the Red Room Collective, a volunteer group that sponsors weekly concerts in...

 2003:Mede- Recorded, 2004

Jack Wright
Jack Wright
Jack Wright was the hero of a popular series of Victorian science fiction dime novels and story papers written by Luis Senarens, the so-called "American Jules Verne". A few stories are also credited to Francis W. Doughty...

 and Friends at High Zero
High Zero
High Zero is an annual festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music hosted in Baltimore, Maryland, US starting in 1999, and is one of the largest Free Music festivals in the US, if not the world. It is hosted by the Red Room Collective, a volunteer group that sponsors weekly concerts in...

 2001: Open Wide- Recorded, 2002

Katt Hernandez and Friends at High Zero
High Zero
High Zero is an annual festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music hosted in Baltimore, Maryland, US starting in 1999, and is one of the largest Free Music festivals in the US, if not the world. It is hosted by the Red Room Collective, a volunteer group that sponsors weekly concerts in...

 2001:The Long Awaited Etcetera- Recorded, 2002

Darker- with Adam James Wilson and Arto Artinian- Stone Quarry Records, 2001

Unify- with Adam James Wilson, Jonathan Wood Vincent, Aaron Trant and Arto Artinian- Stone Quarry Records, 2001

Frank Pahl: In Cahoots- In Cahoots- as a supporting artist- Back of Beyond, 1993

External links

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