HOLMÈS: La Nuit et l’Amour
SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7
BEACH: Symphony in E minor, Op.32 ‘Gaelic’

Eszter Horváth, Music Director

Katherine Benson, Soloist

Young American pianist Katherine Benson is quickly emerging as an important artistic figure of her generation through her “stunning” (ArtsKnoxville) performances and passion for arts leadership.  

A native of Jonesborough, TN, Katherine has performed as a soloist across the USA and abroad in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Katherine has additionally garnered numerous triumphs in over a dozen national and international piano competitions, having won top prizes in the Seattle, Kerikeri, Walled City Music, Teresa Carreño, and Thousand Islands International Piano Competitions, as well as the grand prize of the 2020 George R. Johnson Concerto Competition. Katherine most recently received the prestigious finalist award at the 2022 Heida Hermanns International Music Competition in Westport, CT, in which she made a solo recital appearance at the Westport Museum of Modern Art and hosted a masterclass with local pre-college pianists from the Westport Suzuki School.  

An avid chamber musician, Katherine is the Artistic Director and pianist for The Paramount Chamber Players (TPCP), one of the premier chamber music ensembles of the the Appalachian region and now in its eighteenth concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020, Katherine has organized and performed over a dozen concerts with the ensemble, including a professionally recorded and entirely virtual 2020–2021 concert season. Katherine’s recent performance highlights with TPCP include Shostakovich’s Piano Trio in E Minor, Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor, and Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite arranged for piano four-hands.  

Katherine is deeply passionate about arts leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration, and her innovative projects have been sponsored by multiple grants from the University of Tennessee and Rackham College at the University of Michigan. As an exploration between the intersections of artistic media, Katherine recently commissioned seven new pieces of art from graduate and undergraduate visual art students, each new work created directly in response to a solo piano piece. Katherine will share her work in fostering creativity and collaboration across the arts as a presenter at the 2023 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.  

Katherine is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the University of Michigan, where she studies with Professor Arthur Greene. She also holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and an Artist Certificate from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and her teachers have included Chih-Long Hu, Nelita True, James Giles, and Jerilyn Paolini. Katherine also serves on the faculty of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, where she maintains a studio of undergraduate and graduate piano majors and teaches classes in piano literature and keyboard pedagogy.