Portland Harpist Kate Petak

Kate Petak, a native of Houston, Texas, began playing the piano at age five and started the harp a year later. At age 17, she appeared as a soloist with the Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra in Houston, performing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. That year, she was also named a Young Master by the Texas Commission on the Arts and received a grant for summer study with renowned harpist Lucile Lawrence at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts.  Other summer festivals she has performed at include the Texas Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institute, and the ARIA International Festival.
 
Kate studied harp performance at Boston University, the Royal College of Music in London, and  Ball State University, where she earned her Master's degree with Professor Elizabeth Richter in 2008. In 2006, she won first prize in the Ball State University Undergraduate Concerto Competition, playing the Harp Concerto by Alberto Ginastera.  As winner, she presented a solo recital at Mukogawa University in Osaka, Japan. She has also presented solo recitals in Boston, Houston, Indiana, Portland, and Eugene, performed for President George HW Bush and Houston Mayor Lee Brown, and been featured on KUHF's "Pulling Strings" twice.
 
As an orchestral and opera musician, Kate has performed Mahler's Second Symphony under Bernard Haitink, Puccini's Madame Butterfly under Fiora Contino, and Britten's The Rape of Lucretia under Michael Rosewell in the Britten Theatre in London. Other orchestras she has performed with include the Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra (OR), Oregon Sinfonietta (OR), Fort Wayne Philharmonic (IN), the Clear Lake Symphony (TX), and the New England Philharmonic (MA). She especially enjoys modern music, and has performed in new music ensembles and premiered many new solo and small ensemble works.
 
An avid chamber musician, she particularly enjoys performing with choruses and in small instrumental ensembles. Recent performances include Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, Brahms' Vier Gesange, Holst's Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, and Caplet's The Masque of the Red Death for harp and string quartet. She is especially passionate about Benjamin Britten, and has performed in two of his operas, as well as the Ceremony of Carols and Canticle V for tenor and harp. Currently, she plays in a duo with flautist LeeAnn Sterling.

Outside interests include volunteering with Opera Theater Oregon, hiking, square dancing, and science--she spent a summer working at NASA to develop a database of photographs taken by astronaut Donald Pettit from the International Space Station of cities at night, which is now being used by Google Earth.