Kathryn Smith

Kate Smith is a versatile singer and producer who has worked in New York and Beijing, and has recently re-located to London. Her interests span film, music, theatre, art, puppetry, and more. She earned her BA in Film Studies and East Asian Studies at Columbia University, studied Classical Voice at Guildhall School of Music, and is now entering her second year on the MMus in Leadership program at Guildhall. Her work focuses on exploring devised music theatre and bringing principles of movement and acting into vocal training, improvisation, and composition. Kate is a producer for Re:Sound Music Theatre, and a regular performer of opera, new music, and original country music with her band Sister Kate. She is an experienced improviser and workshop leader. In addition to producing and performing in music theatre projects, Kate is passionate about organizing international music programs, including International Vocal Arts Workshop in Groznjan, Croatia (2008-2011), Compass World Arts Dali in Yunnan, China (2015) and Makers’ Collective Portugal (2016). Previously, Kate was known as the “singing madame” of Beijing’s cabaret scene, in addition to being a bilingual Mandarin-English video producer for brands including Volkswagen and Ogilvy. Kate was also a regular on the Beijing music scene as a member of The Confectionaires, Honky Tonk Angels, Contraplans. * * * Kate began her training in classical voice at the age of thirteen. She has studied with Spiro Malas at the Manhattan School of Music, as well as Jane McMahan at Barnard College, Columbia University. In college she sang with several ensembles including Bach Society, Collegium Musicum and Columbia New Music. She was the soprano soloist for Stravinsky’s “Les Noces” (2009) with the Barnard Columbia Chorus, as well as a soloist for Ursula Kwong-Brown’s “First of Love” (2009) performed in Miller Theater. In 2008 she sang the role of Mary Meyer at a showcase for the opera Psyche and Delia. She sang with Cantori New York for two seasons, and Beijing’s International Festival Choir. Kate is also a long-time student of world music; she was president of New York’s Worldmuse Ensemble in 2008, for which she arranged a final concert that involved Indonesian, Indian and Philippino dance, Italian madrigals, masks and improvised soundscapes with brimbau. Being particularly interested in the traditional folk music of England and America she interned in 2008 at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at the Folk Song and Dance Society of London. She has performed Shapenote music with the singing group IronWorks in New York and was also a member of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a radical street marching band, with whom she played accordion. Kate traveled to Croatia multiple times to participate as a student, and eventually to administrate, the International Vocal Arts Workshop, in which she explored masks, puppetry and street theater performance. In 2009, in addition to writing music, acting and singing, she created dinosaur puppets and shadow puppets for the play Material Theater (2009). She created shadow puppets again for Darragh Martin’s play Map of Lost Things (2010), and made shadow puppets for a scene from the Magic Flute, performed at the 2010 season of the International Vocal Arts Workshop. As part of Puppet Playlist’s monthly showcase (2011), Kate recruited a team of musicians and puppeteers to create and perform an original puppet musical entitled Food Chain Blues. As an actress, Kate has appeared in several Columbia University productions, including The Varsity Show (2006), Urinetown (2006), Hotel: 8 Rooms (2007), Into the Woods (2008), Material Theater (2009) and Variations on the Death of Trotsky (2008) at Cherry Lane Theater. She was also a member of an improv comedy troupe, Sweeps, and co-founder of a musical improv troupe, Alfred. On May Day 2011, Kate performed the main role of original musical We Shall Not Be Moved, written by Phil Andrews, at Brooklyn’s Union Pool (2011). Working with Francesca Hoffman, Kate produced and performed her debut Cabaret at Galapagos Art Space, entitled Lolo and the Midnight Cabaret (2011). In Beijing, Kate quickly became known as the city’s foremost cabaret singer through her elaborate self-produced shows, “Vamps Vixens Vintage”, “Songs from the Labyrinth”, and “Siren.Seductress.Shanghai”, as well as her scintillating cameo appearances with Moonglow Burlesque. She also arranged songs for, played ukulele, and sang with the Confectionaires, a two ukulele three-part vocal harmony group that performed vintage doo-wop and oldies. Lastly, she jumped head-first into Beijing’s Americans scene by forming the Honky Tonk Angels, which covered the best of country music’s lady singers such as Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. Kate could also occasionally be seen playing accordion and lending vocals to the Contraplans led by John Devlin, Tom Pellman’s 芝加哥们儿, Randy Abel Stable.