Young American pianist Katherine Benson is quickly emerging as an important artistic figure of

her generation through her “stunning” (ArtsKnoxville) performances and passion for arts

leadership.

A native of Jonesborough, TN, Katherine has performed as a soloist across the USA and abroad

in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Katherine has additionally

garnered numerous triumphs in over a dozen national and international piano competitions,

having won top prizes in the Seattle, Kerikeri, Walled City Music, Teresa Carreño, and Thousand

Islands International Piano Competitions, as well as the grand prize of the 2020 George R.

Johnson Concerto Competition. Katherine most recently received the prestigious finalist award at

the 2022 Heida Hermanns International Music Competition in Westport, CT, in which she made

a solo recital appearance at the Westport Museum of Modern Art and worked with local pre-

college pianists from the Westport Suzuki School.

An avid chamber musician, Katherine is the Artistic Director and pianist for The Paramount

Chamber Players (TPCP), one of the premier chamber music ensembles of the the Appalachian

region and now in its eighteenth concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020,

Katherine has organized and performed over a dozen concerts with the ensemble, including a

professionally recorded and entirely virtual 2020–2021 concert season. Katherine’s recent

performance highlights from the ensemble’s live 2021–2022 season include Shostakovich’s

Piano Trio in E Minor, Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor, and Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty

Suite arranged for piano four-hands.

Katherine is deeply passionate about arts leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration, and her

innovative projects have been sponsored by multiple grants from the University of Tennessee and

Rackham College at the University of Michigan. As an exploration between the intersections of

artistic media, Katherine recently commissioned seven new pieces of art from graduate and

undergraduate visual art students, each new work created directly in response to a solo piano

piece.

Katherine is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the

University of Michigan, where she studies with Professor Arthur Greene. She also holds degrees

from the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and an Artist Certificate from the

University of Tennessee Knoxville, and her teachers have included Chih-Long Hu, Nelita True,

James Giles, and Jerilyn Paolini.

Katherine is on the faculty of the University of Tennessee

Knoxville as Lecturer in Piano as of Fall 2022