Kate Soper is a New York-based composer and performer. Her current compositional interests include the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the transformation of visceral gestures in and out of time, and the potential of the human voice to communicate abstractly (or not). She likes Xenakis, Machaut, and Kurt Weill, could spend all day playing Bach keyboard suites and has lately found inspiration in the artwork of Anselm Kiefer, the poetry of Jorie Graham and the writings of Brian Ferneyhough. She's also been revisiting the nonfiction of David Foster Wallace and wishes there were a few more Stendhal novels in the world. In addition to concert music, Kate has written music for theatre and dance and has worked extensively as a piano-based singer-songwriter.
Kate has received awards from the Fromm Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Music Theory Society of New York State, and has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center/Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Museum of Biblical Art, Yarn/Wire, and the Kenners. Her work has been performed by ensembles such as the Knights string orchestra, Dinosaur Annex, the Due East Ensemble, the Second Instrumental Unit, and Newspeak. As a singer with experience in Western Classical and Indian Carnatik music, pop music, and improvisation, she performs frequently as a new music soprano and has performed in US and world premieres of works by Beat Furrer, Caroline Mallonée, Alex Mincek, and Richard Carrick, among others.
Kate is Managing Director and vocalist of Wet Ink, a new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out and promoting innovative music across aesthetic categories. She received her Bachelor of Music in composition from Rice Universtiy in 2003 and is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia Universtiy, where her teachers have included Fred Lerdahl, Mario Davidovsky, and Fabien Lévy. She was born and raised in Ann Arbor Michigan.