Artist Bio

About Kate

A dynamic and engaging performer, Kate Loughrey is known for her versatility playing classical, jazz, pop, and folk music. In addition to her solo career, she is also one half of The Sprezzatura Duo, which specializes in audience-friendly concerts featuring music from around the world. As an alumna of HarpFusion, the internationally acclaimed touring ensemble, Kate has toured as a member and soloist to Asia, Europe, and throughout the U.S. She also assisted in the production of two CDs by the group, 25th Anniversary Spectacular and Harps On Tour. The latter features her transcription of the Boieldieu Concerto in C for 14 harps and orchestra.

Kate has also performed several world premieres for symphonic and chamber ensembles and is active as both an arranger and composer for solo harp. As a recipient of a Peabody Grant, she performed 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 honors have included 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.

Kate holds a Master of Music in Harp Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. She has also studied at l'Ecole Normale de Musique d'Alfred Cortot in Paris and is a Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music in London (FRSM), completing the ABRSM diploma syllabus with distinction in 2010. Kate is currently a Ph.D candidate and Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California. Her principal teachers have included Dr. Carrol McLaughlin, Dr. Ruth Inglefield, Isabelle Perrin, JoAnn Turovsky, and Dorinne Yoder. In addition to performing, Kate enjoys teaching both folk harp and concert harp to students of all ages and abilities.