Kathryn Schulmeister

Praised for her “expressive and captivating performance” (GRAMMY.com), Hawai‘i-born bassist Kathryn Schulmeister enjoys a creative music practice as a versatile performer, educator and researcher. Recent honors include a 2020 GRAMMY® Award nomination as a collaborating artist featured on Susan Narucki’s The Edge of Silence, a contemporary classical album of chamber works by György Kurtág on AVIE Records (2019).
 
Schulmeister has appeared as a soloist with leading international contemporary ensembles including Klangforum Wien, the ELISION Ensemble and Ensemble Vertixe Sonora. She has given solo performances at venues and festivals around the world including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, ECLAT Festival Neue Musik Stuttgart, San Diego Museum of Making Music, soundSCAPE Festival, Vértice Festival and the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE. She is a current member of the ELISION Ensemble, Fonema Consort, and Echoi Ensemble and often performs as a guest artist with various adventurous ensembles such as Delirium Musicum, Ensemble MusikFabrik, SWR Experimentalstudio Freiburg, Wild Up! or Ensemble Dal Niente.

Schulmeister performed as a member of the bass section of the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2017. Since relocating to California in 2017, she has performed as principal bass with the Ojai Festival Orchestra and Lucerne Festival Alumni Orchestra, substitute principal bass with the Modesto Symphony Orchestra and Downey Symphony Orchestra, and substitute section bass with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, New West Symphony, and with California Chamber Orchestra.

Her research paper titled Learning Strategies for Complex Rhythms: Approaching Richard Barrett’s splinter for contrabass solo (2018-2022) was selected as Grand Prize Winner for the International Society of Bassists’ 2022 Research Competition and was published in The Online Journal of Bass Research in June 2023.

Schulmeister completed her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of California San Diego with a research focus on developing learning strategies for contemporary music. She received her Master of Music degree from McGill University and Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. Her mentors include Mark Dresser, Ali Kian Yazdanfar and Todd Seeber.

Kathryn Schulmeister performs with Delirium Musicum