A native of Tennessee, American pianist Katherine Benson is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and masterclass clinician, and has performed across the USA and abroad in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Highlights from the 2023-2024 concert seasons include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Clara Schumann’s Concerto in A Minor with Spectrum Orchestra, as well as solo recitals in Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Washington, and North Dakota.
Katherine has also garnered triumphs in over a dozen international and national competitions, having won top prizes in the Heida Hermanns, Seattle, Kerikeri, Walled City Music, and Thousand Islands International Piano Competitions.
An avid chamber musician, Katherine is the Artistic Director of The Paramount Chamber Players (TPCP), a premier chamber ensemble of the Appalachian Region and now in its nineteenth concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020, Katherine has organized and performed nearly three dozen performances with the ensemble.
Deeply passionate about collaboration and leadership, Katherine’s innovative projects have been sponsored by multiple grants from the Universities of Michigan and Tennessee. In a recent project exploring interdisciplinary studies, Katherine commissioned seven new pieces of art inspired by piano repertoire, which were featured in a lecture at the 2023 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy. Katherine additionally co-founded and co-directed the Knoxville International Piano Festival, now in its second year.
Katherine is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan as a student of Arthur Greene. She also holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University and previously studied with Chih-Long Hu, James Giles, Nelita True, and Jerilyn Paolini. She currently serves as faculty at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.