“Kari Watson’s music has bite as well as poetry. The composer speaks their own language between surreal-synthetic sound worlds and radio-play-like collage.” – Excerpt from the jury statement for the Kranichstein Music Prize 2023.

About Me:

Kari Watson (b.1998, they/them) is a composer, performer, and sound artist working between the mediums of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic music, live performance, and interactive installation work.

As a performer playing analog synthesizer, they engage a customizable spatialization software built in MaxMSP with spatial speaker arrays to further explore issues of tactility and drama in immersive sonic environments. Recent shows include a duo with Katinka Kleijn at km28, live scoring of an 80 minute dance show, SOAK, a solo set at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and the premier of TETHER, an hour long performance piece for 3 modular synthesizers, dancer and live projections on Frequency Festival at Constellation. 

With roots in vocal study and performance, their work is informed by the vocal line and often incorporates text. Inspired by their burgeoning research on electronic mediation of the voice and its relationship to identity, gender and sexuality from 1960-present, Watson explores the voice as a raw material to be manipulated and processed towards various dramatic ends.

Their work has been performed and recorded in the United States and abroad by several ensembles, most recently by Ensemble Dal Niente, Collective Lovemusic, TAK Ensemble, the MIVOS Quartet, the Chicago Philharmonic, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble with Sandbox Percussion, ~NOIS Saxophone Quartet, and Quatuor Diotima, among others. Watson’s work has also been featured on a variety of concerts and festivals, such as at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Composers Now Dialogues Series, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Ravinia Festival, Les Écoles D’art Américaines de Fontainebleau, Chicago's Frequency Festival, the Ear Taxi Festival, and at the New Music Gathering.

Recently featured by the Washington Post as one of the 23 for ’23: Composers and performers to watch this year, Watson has received several awards and distinctions for their work such as the 2023 Kranichstein Music Prize for Composition from the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the 2023 Nerenberg, Gerts and Hammond Prize from the Musicians Club of Women, a 2022 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2022 Student Composer Award from Broadcast Music Industry. 

Watson holds a BM from Oberlin Conservatory in Composition, with a minor in TIMARA (technology in music and related arts) and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago on a full fellowship from the Division of the Humanities.

Portrait by Ashleigh Dye

performance photo by Alex Halstead