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 the competition sphere, 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 was most recently one of only four finalists in the prestigious Heida Hermanns International Music Competition.

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 and serves as a graduate student instructor of private and class piano. 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 include 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.