Stephen Katz

New York Times: With a bow and fingers as light as feathers Stephen Katz makes a cello bring out meanings you might not have suspected were there. - - New York Times

Paul Winter: Stephen Katz makes some remarkably innovative music with the cello. While revering its traditions, he is on the cutting edge of liberating the instrument from being locked into the printed page... His composition, Eight Days of Eve is the most beautiful piece of "looped" music I have ever heard. - - Paul Winter, 6-time Grammy winner

Jody Elff (Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon): Of all the live looping performers I’ve heard, Stephen Katz has not only mastered his instrument, reinvented it’s technique, but also integrated the potential of electronics into his compositions.


- -Jody Elff, sound artist and technician (Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon)

Chris White, New Directions Cello Assoc: A cellist whose name is almost synonymous with our festival, Stephen Katz has revolutionized pizzicato technique for the cello. His use of looping to layer multiple tracks of cello in performance is breathtaking. All of this is in the service of his beautiful and imaginative, original music. - - Chris White, Director, New Directions Cello Association

Susan Werner: listening to yer discs, u r a force, dude. - Direct Email

Eugene Friesen: Stephen's musical talents are formidable! He has a distinctive harmonic language, lovely sense of phrasing, chops and a beautiful voice. - - Eugene Friesen, cellist, composer, Grammy Award winner

Toby Shimin (Emmy nom, Seabiscuit): You are supremely talented, Stephen and I am ... immersing myself in your music! - - Toby Shimin, Emmy nominee, Seabiscuit

When Stephen Katz breaks out his cello to illustrate a musical point, he often wears an expression somewhere between concentration and delight. He's having a very good time. That's probably why he's in such demand—Katz plays solo shows (often using looping), backs up dancers at area shindigs, plays with the Paul Winter Consort, and is musical director of Wire Monkey Dance. He also regularly plays at the New Directions Cello Festival, where he teaches some of the techniques he's developed for the instrument.
In a recent interview, Katz revealed that he began his musical life wanting to be a drummer. "I loved rhythm in pop," says Katz. "I played drums with a pillow and a box." But his mother talked him out of such a loud, non-melodic instrument. That led to the cello, says Katz: "I started playing chamber music before I really knew what anything else was."
Later, he discovered guitar, and found a lot to like. "When I got a guitar I could play rhythms, which is what I loved about music," he says. Even so, Katz says, he eventually decided to study classical cello in college, rather than focus on guitar.
Katz, originally from San Francisco, got an invite to audition for a quartet at UMass-Amherst, and came to New England to join the group in 1986. When that group disbanded, Katz taught at a school in northwest Connecticut. His time there offered him a chance to return to composing, and his cello playing went in some quite new directions.
"I started composing things on the cello that were a lot like what I liked on the guitar. I'd done a lot of contemporary music and I knew a lot about making sounds on the cello... music that was close to my heart, but without a lot of heart in it. I wanted to write music that was more basic, rhythmic music, but on the cello."
When Katz picks up his instrument, it's quickly apparent that the strictures of classical methods aren't enough to encompass his imaginings. He doesn't seem to need a bow, and his rhythmic approach has helped him discover new ways to get the sounds he wants. The result of his experimentation was a rhythmic sort of finger-striking that resembles electric bass methods more than traditional cello playing.
Katz explains that, groundbreaking though such styles might have been when he first started using them, the context of contemporary music and the desires of cellists to play in new settings have conspired to make the unusual usual: "Folks like me, listening to contemporary music, pop music, want to make rhythmic music with the cello, and sing with it, and play in bands, put it through a distortion pedal, through an echo or a looping pedal."
At the most recent installment of the New Directions Cello Festival, now in its 14th year, Katz shared one of his methods—a finger-and-thumb near-strum using a big arm motion to sweep across the strings—with other cellists. "I gave a workshop in the technique I call 'flying pizzicato.'
When Katz demonstrates "flying pizzicato," it looks much like a guitar player's strumming. But the result is a quick kind of string hit that is downright funky, evoking African rhythmic complexities and even the guitar stylings of players like Habib Koite or Oliver Mtukudzi.
"What I love about drumming, especially native, indigenous African drumming less influenced by contemporary media, [is that the] rhythms are more inherent to the way the body moves. I'm doing it through my arm. That's part of why this approach works for me. Because it's a continuous flow. It's very simple, the premise. The limitations are great. There are only four strings, one hand to tune them while I'm playing, and a thumb and a finger. What are the possibilities? How much music can be made?"
Rather than simply learning how one is supposed to play the cello, he has made the instrument his own with his adventurous style. When he speaks about his playing, Katz often sounds more like a philosopher than a classical musician, and it is his well-thought-out approach that has led him both to new discoveries and to an unusual, engaging style that is a joy to watch in action.
"This instrument was not made for rhythm—it was made for melody in particular, for the bow, which I still use occasionally," says Katz. "But I have wanted to bring those things together. It's what I love to do." - Valley Advocate

If you've never heard Stephen's music, then you are in for an amazing treat. Far beyond what you might think of as "cello" music, it breaches the ethereal and moves into deep mystical experience. - - Miles, The Warm Room, Northampton, MA

I couldn't put into words what I felt about your splendid concert until days afterward. For me the richness of your music--I loved the juxtaposition of the percussive rhythms with those long-arched legato melodies--was one element. The other was your energy--the heart-feltness, the kindness, the humor. The whole evening was so life-affirming--and a testament to the power of healing. I was deeply touched by your ending the program with the piece you'd written for your late wife. And how lovely and fitting to have Bach as an encore. Much love and many blessings to you and your beautiful family as you continue to offer your gifts--they're needed in this troubled and troubling world.  - - Jim Ballard