Elizabeth Kate is a Brooklyn-based cellist and vocalist working in contemporary classical music. Her practice centers on expanding the repertoire for vocalizing cellist, merging voice and instrument into asingle expressive body. As One, her most recent solo project, is a compositional and performative exploration of the bodies relationship to sound. By merging the voice with the cello, she has created a singular entity where body and instrument unite as equal partners, dissolving all boundaries and canonical expectations. Through improvisation, vocalization, commissioning, and composing, her artistic research uses techniques to direct audience attention between the cello and voice, manipulating auditory focus to alter both the listener’s experience and perception of control.
Elizabeth is a 2025 New Music USA Creator Fund recipient, commissioning Seare Farhat to create Sacred Sound Fractured Space, a concert-length work for voice, cello, and resonating sound objects. Supported by ChamberQueer, the piece will premiere at their June 2026 festival. She is also a founding member of AREPO, a contemporary ensemble for accordion, cello, clarinet, and electric guitar. Their debut album Listening Time was featured in Bandcamp’s Best Contemporary Music for March 2025.
Elizabeth has collaborated with artists and institutions including Jen Shyu, Ultima Festival of Contemporary Music, Eighth Blackbird, Cassandra Jenkins, Yarn/Wire, and the Munch Museum. She holds a BM and BA from Oberlin College and Conservatory and an MM from the Norwegian Academy of Music. She performs on a 19th-century French Andrea Castegnari cello, on loan from the Virtu Foundation.