know girl

Not everyone realizes that Kathryn was actually one of the stars of the SAIC Sound dept. during her MFA studies--she was the very able and approachable grad assistant to dept. chair Bob Snyder.... which meant that she was quite skilled at soldering cables. Give her any kind of cable and she could solder it.... with aplomb.

Kathryn's sound pieces revealed her dry, ironic (but never cynical or sarcastic) extremely playful humor, impeccable sensitivity to the textural/musical qualities of sound, and vision as a composer. I'll never forget my first experience of Kathryn's work during one of Bob Snyder's classes--a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," as sung by a synthesized chorus of barking dogs. It was quite something.

And I don't know if very many people knew that Kathryn graduated with one of the top fellowship awards for her sound compositions. I vaguely recall this as a suite of 3 or 4 short musical pieces arranged on the School's first digital synthesizer. I really hope that somewhere, somehow, someone will find the audio tapes... I'm sure they must still exist... somewhere.

I actually did not know Kathryn very well until shortly after our SAIC days. I mainly knew her through my friend and sound instructor Wayne Fielding. They were renowned and much in demand in our circles as the ultra-cool DJ duo, yb + know girl... their mastery of the turntables and dance mixes were kind of transcendent.... I'm certain Prince would have approved (I wonder if they had met).

I was fortunate enough to have Kathryn loan her talents as a pianist to some of my early performances. At the 1986 (or was it 1987?) New Music Chicago Festival, she performed a mesmerizing Moonlight Sonata that somehow transmuted into my punk choral cover of Paul Anka's "You're Having My Baby" (and we were nearly thrown off the stage by the "serious" composers who organized the event). She also created a stellar adaptation of "Stranger in Paradise" for my opera "The Martha," as "sung" by a Brazilian art history grad student who had never set foot on stage before... or probably since.

Wayne, Kathryn and I joined forces in creating a modestly anarchic operatic performance at Chicago Filmmakers, "The Honeymoon," which, in so many words, was a convergence of the Jackie Gleason sitcom "The Honeymooners" with Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard and Kristeva, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass... a one-night run that we never even considered documenting. It was one of those pieces where performers outnumbered the audience, but we had such a joy working together (especially brainstorming in front of the murky aquarium at Rossi's Liquors on State and Hubbard), the rest didn't really matter.

It took me a while to realize that Kathryn also happened to be an art critic...

... and I can't believe you're gone.