“Kari Watson’s music has bite as well as poetry. The composer speaks their own language between surreal-synthetic sound worlds and radio-play-like collage.”

– Excerpt from the jury statement for the Kranichstein Music Prize 2023.

About Me:

Kari Watson (they/them) is a composer, performer, and intermedia artist whose work explores the intersections of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance, and interactive installation. Their composition practice is cross-disciplinary and deeply collaborative, often involving workshop-driven processes that prioritize collective exploration and exchange. As a performer playing analog synthesizers, they engage a customizable spatialization software built in MaxMSP with spatial speaker arrays to further explore issues of tactility and drama in immersive sonic environments.

They have collaborated with a wide range of performers and ensembles both in the United States and abroad. Most recently, they have worked with Percussionist Jennifer Torrence, Violinists Maya Bennardo and Sarah Saviet, Yarn/Wire, Collective Lovemusic, cellist Eduard Teregulov, Ensemble Dal Niente, TAK Ensemble, the MIVOS Quartet, Line Upon Line, the Chicago Philharmonic, the Civic Orchestra, Quatuor Diotima, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, and Sandbox Percussion, among others.

Watson’s work has been presented at leading international festivals and institutions, including the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (DE), Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), the MINU Festival for Expanded Music (DK), the Composers Now Dialogues Series with Tania León, the Ravinia Festival’s Breaking Barriers Festival with Marin Alsop, Les Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau (FR), Chicago’s Frequency Festival, the Ear Taxi Festival, and at the New Music Gathering. Their performances and collaborations have also been programmed on series such as the CLEAT Series and the Pleiades Series at Elastic Arts, Yarn Wire’s Currents Series at Roulette in NYC, Experimental Sound Studio’s Florasonic and Patchbent Series, and on International Anthem’s 11x11 Series with Katinka Kleijn.

Recently featured by Musical America as their New Artist of the Month (February, 2025), Watson has received several awards and distinctions for their work such as the 2023 Kranichstein Music Prize for Composition from the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and a 2022 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Furthermore, their work has been recognized and supported by Broadcast Music Industry, the Musicians Club of Women, and New Music USA, and they have collaborated on projects funded by Arts Council England, SWR Kultur, DCASE in partnership with the Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Watson plays modular synthesizers as a soloist and as one half of a duo project with cellist Katinka Kleijn with a recent release of their debut album VISTAS on Elektramusic (June 2025), and an upcoming international tour in the UK and EU in January, 2026. Their debut album, enclosures, was released with Sawyer Editions (January 2025) and has since been reviewed in the June 2025 issue of the Tempo Journal (Cambridge University Press), listed in the Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, January 2025, by Peter Margasak for Bandcamp Daily, and listed by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore as one of the top records of 2025. Words about Watson’s music have appeared in several publications such as Seismograf Mag (DK), The Wire (UK), Cambridge University Press’s Tempo Journal (UK), The Washington Post, the Chicago Classical Review, and Ruch Muzyczny (PL).

Current projects include collaborations with UK based mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, founding member of Spektral Quartet Doyle Armbrust, and a new work for Clarinetist Heather Roche, along with duo performances with Sonic Artist Lou Mallozzi, as well as ongoing collaborations with cellist Katinka Kleijn, composer/synthesist Aaron Holloway-Nahum, and videographer Luana Borges.

Watson holds a BM from Oberlin Conservatory in Composition, with a minor in TIMARA (technology in music and related arts) and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago on a full fellowship from the Division of the Humanities.