Katrina Wreede has been a professional symphony musician, a jazz violist, a member of the Turtle Island String Quartet, a concert soloist, a belly dancer, a police fingerprinter, a non-denominational wedding officiant, a player of Tango Nuevo, Persian and Central European, and Roma (gypsy) music as well as a composer for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, and dance, sometimes collaborating with other artists to create works about social injustice. Her works are distributed by MMB Music and performed internationally, including “Mr. Twitty’s Chair”, now in its 10th touring season with the David Parsons Dance Group and the Ahn Trio.
She taught advanced composition to exceptional youth musicians from 1998-2004 with a grant from the American Composers Forum, creating a handbook for ACF, used by composers around the country working with youth. She was resident composer and creator of the “Junior Composer” program for the Berkeley Symphony as well as conducting workshops on improvisation and composition around the country, including Boston Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, the Polytechnic School, Albany High School, Kingsburg Unified School District (elementary and middle school), UC Berkeley Young Musicians Program, Oakland High School, Lick-Wilmerding High School, and Los Angeles’ Clairbourn School. She co-directed Alternative Strings Camp for the Crowden School and coached and assistant-directed for the Sierra Jazz Society Jazz Camp in 2005 and 2006, as well as creating and conducting their Junior Jazz Camp. She has been working with youth orchestras since 1993, including the California Youth Symphony, Berkeley Youth Symphony, Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, Oakland Youth Symphony and Summer Music West. She has also worked with teachers, including all the music teachers from the San Francisco Unified School District and Nevada County and with string teachers and school orchestra conductors from all over North American at the American String Teachers Association conferences in 2004 and 2005. She is a contributing author to the ASTA book, “Playing and Teaching the Viola” and author of “Violaerobics-A Technical Workout for Violists”. This Fall she will be teaching the Comprehensive Musicianship Program for gifted young musicians at San Francisco’s renowned Community Music Center, after a successful year-long composer residency there.
Recent commissions and projects include works for the AXIS Dance Troupe, the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, the Tassajara Symphony Orchestra, the Pegasus Quartet, the Vox Novus 60x60 project, the “Music for People to Play” project, several silent film scores, including "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" and many works for her own ensembles, Synchronopolis (a string trio of composers) and Serafine Trio (soprano, viola and piano-all women composers writing on themes of nature and love). Her works “Groovla” and "56 seconds of Creep" are scheduled for release by Vox Novus. The Pegasus Quartet released a CD of her works in 2005 entitled “Healing Heart”.
