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Press Releases
Sept. 18: Katherine Young to Release New Album - BIOMES - on Chaikin Records
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Primo Artists | VP, Public Relations
katy@primoartists.com | 646.801.9406
Composer Katherine Young to Release New Album, BIOMES
Three Works – BIOMES 6.0, 8.1, and 7.4 – Drawn from an Evolving Speculative Study of Earth's Ecosystems
Featuring Olivia Block, Ben LaMar Gay, Brian Chase, Tim Daisy, and Yarn/Wire
Out September 18, 2026 on Chaikin Records
Album Release Concert at Brooklyn’s Roulette Intermedium
Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Tickets: roulette.org/event/biomes-album-release-katherine-young
“[I]n Young’s world all noise is emotional.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
“Young’s compositional hallmarks – her visceral approach to sound; her organic use of repetition, structure, and pacing; her attentiveness to the smallest details of timbre; her adventurousness in using instruments in unexpected ways – made the work feel like a living thing, breathing and unfolding as the evening progressed.” – New Music Box
New York, NY (July 29, 2026) – On Friday, September 18, 2026, composer, improviser, and sound artist Katherine Young releases BIOMES on Chaikin Records (CKR 021). The album gathers three works speculatively investigating a diverse range of natural ecosystems – BIOMES 6.0, BIOMES 8.1, and BIOMES 7.4 – created for and alongside electronicist Olivia Block, multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, percussionists Brian Chase and Tim Daisy, and the piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire. The CD is accompanied by a special-edition chapbook.
BIOMES is an ongoing project that draws on an evolving collection of materials – photographs, scientific and fictional texts, notation, field recordings, videos, drawings, maps, and more – organized in relation to specific ecological communities, among them desert, wetlands, forest, oyster reef, and the human microbiome. Each biome carries its own characteristics that shape the music's timbre and density, as well as the interaction strategies Young weaves among performers.
After many years working within the improvised and new music communities in New York City and Chicago, Young settled in Atlanta, Georgia in 2020, exploring urban woodlands while studying writers including Octavia Butler, David Haskell, N. K. Jemisin, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rebecca Solnit, and Peter Wohlleben. The project reflects Young’s relationships with all three cities and their respective music communities, echoing the commonalities and stark differences between these ecosystems.
"Through research, imaginings, and collaborative creation, BIOMES seeks to better understand our world – the complex ecosystems of this planet, humans' impact on Earth's biomes, and the human and more-than-human stories imprinted on it," said Young. "I am motivated by curiosity, a desire to learn about our vast and complex world, and a hopeful urgency to imagine our collective future."
BIOMES 6.0 is a notated concert work created with and for Yarn/Wire, developed over several years of collaboration and commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation. Beginning with the BIOMES materials, Young and the ensemble created shorthand instructions for improvised performances, then recorded their soundworlds and built multispeaker installations. Young later used those recordings to mock up and transcribe the score. The notation incorporates improvisation, including "species improvisations," in which a chosen organism from a given biome informs a player's part.
The BIOMES 6.0 score explores the following five biomes: Zona de Silencio, Wetlands, Oyster Reef, Human Microbiome, and Chattahoochee and Ocmulgee River Watersheds.
Oyster Reef was developed when Young and Yarn/Wire were working on an earlier version of the piece at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and reflects the local Brooklyn ecosystem and the many inspiring efforts to build up the oyster reefs around NYC to protect the coastline. Young says, “As I was writing 6.0, I was thinking about connections and transitions -- in this case between NYC and Atlanta, where we did the first performance of 6.0. And Crassostrea virginica (the Eastern oyster) is found all along the N. American Atlantic coast, and there are efforts underway to maintain and rebuild the coastline using oyster reefs in Georgia, NYC, and elsewhere.”
BIOMES 8.1 is a studio-based work created with Olivia Block. A shared interest in lichen – its asexual reproduction and slow growth in extreme conditions – led the two toward ideas of self-similarity, repetition, and speed. Working with percussionist Tim Daisy, they recorded on physical tape to vary and layer material at different rates of playback.
BIOMES 7.4 centers on a studio session with Ben LaMar Gay. After discussing the BIOMES concepts, the two improvised; Young then shaped the recordings into a track and invited Brian Chase to add percussion. Her editing moves between scales – zooming in on a single organism and back out to a wider landscape, or traveling from below ground up into the treetops.
The album release will be marked by a concert at Roulette Intermedium on Thursday, September 17 at 8:00 PM, featuring a live performance of BIOMES 6.0 by Yarn/Wire, a live tape-machine work by Block and Young, and improvisations by Gay, Chase, and Young.
Concert Details
Katherine Young: BIOMES (Album Release)
Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Tickets: $25 advance, $30 doors, $20 Student/Seniors. Use code EARLYBIRDER at checkout for $5 off through August 31.
Link: roulette.org/event/biomes-album-release-katherine-young/
Katherine Young, electronics, bassoon
Olivia Block, electronics
Ben LaMar Gay, cornet
Brian Chase, percussion
Yarn/Wire
Laura Barger, piano
Julia Den Boer, piano
Dustin Donahue, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion
BIOMES Tracklist
- Katherine Young – BIOMES 6.0 (2023) [26:33]
Laura Barger, piano, feedback piano, jumping speaker
Julia Den Boer, piano, percussion, bubbles
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Sae Hashimoto, percussion - Katherine Young – BIOMES 8.1 (2025) [09:40]
Olivia Block, organ
Tim Daisy, percussion
Katherine Young, piano - Katherine Young – BIOMES 7.4 (2025) [06:10]
Ben LaMar Gay, cornet, electronics, voice, percussion
Katherine Young, bassoon, electronics, voice
Brian Chase, percussion
Total Time: 00:42:23
Recording Credits:
CKR 021
Produced by Katherine Young and Brian Chase, with support from Emory University College of Arts and Sciences
Mastered by Brian Chase
BIOMES 6.0: Recorded and edited by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio; mixed by Ben Greenberg
BIOMES 8.1: Recorded by Greg Norman at Electrical Audio; edited by Olivia Block and Katherine Young; mixed by Olivia Block
BIOMES 7.4: Recorded by Alex Inglizian at ESS; edited and mixed by Katherine Young
Cover image by Jordan Martins (Phenotype 223); design by Sonnenzimmer
About Katherine Young
Composer Katherine Young makes electroacoustic music and sonic art using expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures. Her work has been recognized by awards and fellowships including a Fromm Foundation at Harvard University Commission and the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition.
Relationship building, collaboration, and ecological thinking are central to her practice. She has worked closely with Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, Linda Jankowska, Olivia De Prato, Weston Olencki, Amy Cimini, Austin Wulliman, Jeremy Bolen & Alexandria Smith, Anthony Braxton, and others. The LAPhil, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and others have commissioned her music. The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, the Goat Farm, and others have commissioned her installation work.
As a bassoonist and improviser, Young amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. Her debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). She also regularly performs in ad hoc improvised groups and with projects such as Beautifulish (with Sam Scranton on percussion and electronics) and a duo with violist Jessica Pavone. She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including the self-titled debut by her quartet Pretty Monsters and a box set duo recording with Anthony Braxton.
Following undergraduate studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory, Young pursued graduate studies at Northwestern and Wesleyan. An active teacher and mentor, Young has taught at summer festivals such as the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Yarn/Wire’s Institute, and New Music on the Point. She taught composition, electronic music, and improvisation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Berklee College of Music before joining the faculty of Emory University. Based in Atlanta, she lives and works on the homelands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
For more information and to listen to her music, please visit www.katherineyoung.info.
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