Biography
About Kate
A dynamic and engaging performer, Kate Loughrey is known for her versatility playing classical, jazz, and world music. As an alumna of HarpFusion, the internationally acclaimed touring ensemble, she has toured as a member and soloist to Asia, Europe, and throughout the U.S., including playing one particularly memorable concert at a party given by Oprah Winfrey in honor of Maya Angelou. Kate also assisted in the production of two CDs by HarpFusion, 25th Anniversary Spectacular (2003) and Harps On Tour (2005). The latter features her transcription of the Boieldieu Concerto in C for 14 harps and orchestra.
She has also performed several world premieres for symphonic and chamber ensembles and is active as both an arranger and composer for solo harp. In 2007 she was a recipient of a Peabody Career Development Grant, which allowed her to perform her original composition for solo jazz harp, "Dawn to Dusk," at the International Jazz and Pop HarpFest in Salt Lake City to critical acclaim. Kate has placed as a finalist twice in the American Harp Society Foundation Awards national competition and as a semi-finalist for the National Alliance for Excellence in Performing Arts. She also earned second place as Senior Instrumentalist in the H.B. Goodlin competition. Other awards have included first prize in the Concours National, sponsored by the French Embassy, and being named a Regents Fine Arts/Music Scholar, a Medici Scholar, an IES Fine Arts scholar, a Barta-Lehman Musical Scholar, and a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar. In 2008 she was elected the Vice-President of the San Diego Chapter of the American Harp Society.
Kate holds a Master of Music in Harp Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University as well as a Bachelor of Music in Harp Performance and a Bachelor of Arts in French from the University of Arizona. She has also studied at l'Ecole Normale de Musique d'Alfred Cortot in Paris and completed the British-based Royal School of Music harp syllabus with distinction. Kate is currently a Ph.D candidate in Historical Musicology and a Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California.