Women and War and Peace Katelyn Bouska

• Caroline Shaw (b. 1982): Gustave Le Gray:
• 1Shaw: Gustave Le Gray14:04
• Marie Szymanowska (1789 - 1831): Mazurkas:
• 2Szymanowska: Mazurkas02:30
• Vitezslava Kapralova (1915 - 1940): Fantasie:
• 3Kapralova: Fantasie09:11
• Marie Szymanowska: Fragments from a Woman’s Diary:
• 4Szymanowska: Fragments from a Woman’s Diary11:53
• Ruth Schoental (1924 - 2006): Prague Imaginations:
• 5Schoental: Prague Imaginations27:04
• Ivana Loudova (1941 - 2017): Dubnova preludia:
• 6Loudova: Dubnova preludia11:58
• Ludmila Yurina (b. 1962): Shadows and Ghosts:
• 7Yurina: Shadows and Ghosts06:43
• Total Runtime01:23:23

Info for Women and War and Peace

Yarlung executive producer Patrick Trostle heard pianist Katelyn Bouska perform in Bohemian National Concert Hall at the Czech Center in New York City. This was 2021, as the pandemic was beginning to lessen, after live concerts again became possible. Patrick called me a few days later, saying he had just heard this magnificent concert pianist performing works by women composers displaced or destroyed by 200 years of European wars.

“You need to meet Kate,” Patrick said, “and I think you should record her. Kate not only performs in concert halls around the world, but she’s a lightning-smart academic at Curtis Institute researching and lecturing regularly on Central and Eastern European composers close to her heart.”

Women and War and Peace took shape during concert pianist Katelyn Bouska’s darkest days of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. She missed her family and friends, her students at Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and her live performances in front of living breathing audiences. To use the time productively, Bouska revisited women composers she wanted to explore and realized many of them shared a common theme.

They were refugees, or they barely survived, or didn’t survive, and the fact that they were women at the cutting edge of the contemporary music scenes in their various environments made their situations even more difficult. Our earliest composer, Maria Szymanowska, died in the 1830 cholera outbreak instigated by Russia’s invasion of Poland under Tsar Nicholas I. One of our younger composers, Ludmila Yurina, fled her home in Ukraine and found refuge first in the United Kingdom and then Germany after Russia’s invasion in February of 2022 by President Vladimir Putin.

Katelyn Bouska is both American and Czech. She was born in the United States, but spends many months a year performing and lecturing in Prague. Stretching from composers born in the 1700s through the 20th Century, Kate’s repertoire includes music by Caroline Shaw, Maria Szymanowska, Ruth Schoental, Ivana Loudova, Vitezslava Kapralova and Ludmila Yurina.

Katelyn Bouska, piano

Katelyn Bouska
With performances described as “musically evocative” and a skill at engaging audiences in the musical dialogue, Dr. Katelyn Bouska is a frequent solo and collaborative musician. Her unique programming combining rarely-heard Czech and American music with music being written specifically for her by rising composers has found an audience throughout America and on the international concert stage.

With her ability to perform a broad range of repertoire ranging from early music to the most contemporary, she is at ease on clavichord, harpsichord, fortepiano and modern piano. On faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, her passion for informed and personal musical expression extends beyond her piano studio into conducting graduate seminars on performance practice, continuo and period repertoire, and classes exploring theory and harmony as a tool to unlock the grammar of music.

In addition to her D.M.A. in Piano Performance from Temple University, she also holds degrees in early keyboard performance as well as collaborative piano. Committed to re-capturing the imagination of audience members, Katelyn is frequently combining innovative programming with unique artistic partnerships as well as active collaboration with emerging professional composers to communicate their music to wider audiences. With her background as performer, teacher and scholar she is often sought after for multi-disciplinary collaborations with audiences as varied as cultural centers and corporate institutions.

Booklet for Women and War and Peace