Kathleen Tagg

Kathleen Tagg, composer
Kathleen Tagg is a South African composer, pianist and producer based in New York. She has performed on four continents with artists from very different genres and disciplines, and is becoming known for her distinctive sound that mixes together acoustic and electronic sounds, loops, samples and extended techniques she developed. Equally at home in major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall or alternative arts spaces, writing for her own projects and collaborations, creating narrative immersive interdisciplinary performance works, or writing for film and theater, all of her projects reflect her strong desire to connect as a human being first and foremost.
 
With David Krakauer, she co-composed and produced the score for Minyan by Eric Steel (Berlin Biennale 2020) as well as an immersive multimedia concert experience with video designer Jesse Gilbert, The Ties that Bind Us, for the Boulez Saal, Berlin. Recent commissions include a song cycle [commissioned by soprano Golda Schultz and pianist Jonathan Ware, premiered in a live broadcast on Süddeutscher Rundfunk]. Additional new productions include the co-creation of Mazel Tov Cocktail Party, a festive genre-crossing project. Other large-scale works include pieces for the Royal Netherlands Marine Band and Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, and arrangements for New Century Chamber Orchestra and Vienna Jewish Culture Fest. Her musical, Erika’s Wall, with Sophie Jaff, received a developmental production by The Music Theater Company, Chicago. Her work in artistic dialogue includes residencies at Poland’s Borderlands Foundations and WITS School of the Arts, Johannesburg. She was a 2014-2015 Dramatist Guild fellow, 2017 Con Ed Exploring the Metropolis Composer in Residence and 2016 artist-in-residence at Brown Arts Initiative.

Banner photo by Susan and Neil Silverman Photography
Photo of Kathleen Tagg by Colette Y Benjamin