Kate Bennett Wadsworth is a scholar-performer with a fascination for the endless variety of ways in which sound can intersect with meaning. She grew up in Boston, in a house full of puns, and spent most of her childhood trying to sound like her favourite singers on the cello (mostly Pavarotti) and learning how to say “I’m not crazy” in as many languages as possible. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian Studies at Harvard University, Kate went onto study modern cello with Laurence Lesser at the New England Conservatory, baroque cello with Jaap ter Linden in the Royal Dutch Conservatory in the Hague, and 19th-century performance practice with Clive Brown at the University of Leeds.
Kate has appeared at festivals throughout Europe and North America with ensembles such as the Gabrieli Consort, B’Rock, Arion, Tafelmusik, Apollo’s Fire, Masques, and the Academy of Ancient Music, and given lecture-recitals and masterclasses at the Juilliard School, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the Boston Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival.
Her 2017 recording of the Brahms Cello Sonatas with pianist Yi-heng Yang, based on her study of Brahms-circle performance practices and collaborative edition with Clive Brown and Neal Peres da Costa, was praised for its “narrative quality” (Gramophone) and its “ardor and depth” (Early Music America). Kate is also amember of Trio Ilona, which performs 19th-century piano trios on period instruments, and Ensemble Unmeasured, a core group of continuo players with invited soloists, both of which have produced critically acclaimed discs on the Deux-Elles label.
Kate has recently completed a three-year research project on the Schumann Cello Concerto, called “The flexible text: reuniting oral and written traditions in 19th-century music”. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust and hosted by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the project examined early editions, handwritten scores, and hand-annotations to the concerto by 19th-century cellists, culminating in an article (Orpheus Institute 2024), a critical edition of the concerto, both in its original forms (cello and orchestra, cello and piano) and in Kate’s arrangement for cello and string quartet (Bärenreiter 2024), and a recording of her quartet arrangement with the Consone Quartet (Deux-Elles 2025).
Kate lives in Norwich, UK, where she directs the dynamic ensemble, Norwich Baroque, and co-runs the Deux-Elles label, while supervising doctoral students at the Guildhall School in London. She is currently embarking on a pratice-led research project on Aeolian harps in early Romantic music-making.