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Exploring bassoon and voice with guest artist Eleni Katz

Updated: Oct 23

Madison-born professional bassoonist, Eleni Katz, is thrilled to return to her roots by performing with the LunART Chamber Music Collective. Katz is currently based in Fort Worth, Texas, is a Concert Artists Guild artist, an alum of both UW-Madison's Mead Witter School of Music and the Yale School of Music, and a former player of the New World Symphony. Coming from a loving, nurturing family that truly encouraged and fostered a love for the arts within her, Katz’s mother taught art at the Monroe Street Arts Center, and her father played jazz piano every evening for the family.


“I auditioned for Annie The Musical before I could even read,” Katz remembered.


Not only was the Katz Family cultivating an artist’s muse for their daughter, but Katz also remembers loving the neighborhood she grew up in, as it was full of kids who expressed artistic interests alongside her.

Photography by Tamara Benavente

“I believe that my love for music really came from the encouraging figures around me at a young age.”


When Katz moved to Iowa City as a child, her band director noticed her passion for woodwind instruments. She began on the clarinet, but was quickly given the diligent responsibility of the bassoon, igniting the beginning of a journey between Eleni Katz and her voice.


“Bassoon and voice have always been very intertwined for me,” said Katz.

In high school and university, Katz could always be found utilizing her voice in any way she was able; she was singing and competing in choirs, and participating in various acapella groups. She even auditioned for the Women’s Acapella Group Tangled Up In Blue in UW-Madison, but realized in order for her to continue her concentration in bassoon performance studies, she sadly didn’t have all the time in the world for both.


However, these time constraints didn’t stop Katz’s determination to continue using her choral skills in the future. She describes the bassoon’s own anatomy to represent that of a human voice; the reed’s tip opening so closely resembling human vocal cords. Katz has always thought about the sound of a bassoon as a vibration that travels up to her as she sings through the reed.


Photography by Tamara Benavente

“I feel the bassoon is my…vessel and form of expression…it allows me to communicate what I want to say,” explained Katz.


Thus, Katz began interdisciplinary collaborations during the COVID-19 pandemic. She harvested a desire to explore other areas and become a more multi-dimensional musician–and Katz has certainly succeeded since then in earning the acclaimed title as an interdisciplinary artist. Her current artistic fields includes first and foremost the bassoon, then voice, and lastly, her own poetry.


For Katz, her poetry is ultimately private and personal to her. Sometimes she structures poems by piecing together bits of poetry she’ll spontaneously write in the margins of her practice journal! She took the time to write more during the pandemic and concentrated on the idea of the bassoon and voice being intimately intertwined. The first piece in which Katz embraced the natural collaboration of her poetry, bassoon, and voice became Sea Glass Partita for Singing Bassoonist written by Lila Meretzky, which will be performed in the Winds of Change concert on November 8th and 10th.


Check out her performance here:



Becoming an interdisciplinary artist involves significant boundary-pushing, as Katz explores in her next steps.


“Becoming a sort of ‘one-woman show’ was a process that took a lot of coming out of my shell,” said Katz. “I wasn’t sure if it was going to work at first.”


Katz agreed that in order to master both mediums, a certain amount of bravery had to be embraced. She also detailed some of her choices in how she prepares both instruments for performances; Katz ensures that she gets a good warm-up on both bassoon and voice every day, and having a lot of time with the text is essential. Katz spoke on the differences in connection to the audience when playing bassoon versus singing.


“I think the connection is made both ways. I think eye contact and looking around the hall is easier with just voice sometimes. It depends on which one is feeling most natural in the moment…There’s no rush–you can be as indulgent or virtuosic as you feel–it’s about finding the balance between the two.”


Zooming out of the most detailed aspects of Katz’s life, we touched on her long-term thoughts and goals regarding her career, her collaboration with LunART, and the communities she desires to give back to throughout the years.


“I want to continue to just create things and perform as much as possible with people who bring

good energy and joy to the music. I’d like to do more commissions and expect the best of myself and others in the process…A long-term goal for me is to give back to the bassoon community.”


Photography by Tamara Benavente

Katz wishes to pay a great amount of respect to Marc Vallon, Professor of Bassoon Studies at UW-Madison and an alum of the Paris National Conservatory, for instilling a sense of fearlessness in the instrument and encouraging her to perform as much as possible. Katz describes Vallon as incredibly encouraging and supportive–she aims to be a similar figure for the next generation of bassoonists too. Katz also pays her respects to several doctoral students as they took her under their wing in culminating the culture of professional music life, including LunART’s Artistic Director, Iva Ugrčić. Katz recalls being in school together alongside Ugrčić and was inspired by how she truly immersed herself within music as a career.


When it comes to more of her long-term goals, Katz wants to help other women in music find their own voices, just as she did throughout her career. She loves making friends with composers, and has especially found an area of interest in working with composers. Katz says that she makes a conscious effort to program women musicians and composers.


Katz was also given the opportunity to reflect on one of her most personal growth moments as a musician. She describes one of those to be when she came home from the summer in her sophomore year in college from a music festival and ultimately decided to really commit to the lifestyle of a musician.


“I remember having a very serious talk with

Photography by Tamara Benavente

Professor Vallon at the food cart and telling him I wanted to take bassoon very seriously,” recalled Katz.

The desire to learn, the endless hours of practice in the basement of UW-Madison’s humanities building, the constant trips to the Mills Music Library to get scores and hope they wouldn’t be overdue–Katz remembered fondly what that ultimate decision meant to her, and how it came to bring her career to where she is right now.


We invite you to come talk with Katz at our season opener, Winds of Change, on November 8th and 10th where she’ll be performing her interdisciplinary works on bassoon and voice! For more information about these events, click the link here.


P.S. Here are some fun facts about Eleni Katz!

Favorite ice cream flavors: mint chip, pistachio, and pumpkin.

Favorite movie: Dreamgirls.

Favorite season: Fall!





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Article by Emma Bijelić


Emma Bijelić is currently a junior at the Mead Witter School of Music, the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a Bachelor’s in Communications and Music Composition with an emphasis in Flute Studies. She studied flute performance under Dr. Conor Nelson for a portion of her undergrad, and now studies composition under the leadership of Dr. Laura Elise Schwendinger. In addition to her work with LunART, Emma enjoys volunteering at animal shelters, crocheting, learning new music, and nerding out about film.

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