KATIE KETCHUM
A musician, composer and playwright, Katie’s focus is to bring people together through concerts, theater and multicultural chanting. Her recent play “Magdalene” The Mary Magdalene Story, received rave reviews last year in San Francisco and she performed 28 shows at the Sacramento Theatre Company’s to sold out crowds this year.
Her musical studies began in Toronto, Canada, where Katie attended the Royal Conservatory of Music, won many awards sponsored by Her Majesty the Queen and sang on Canadian television.
After appearing on NBC news with her “Clear the Air” concert tour across the United States, Mother Teresa heard Ketchum’s original, healing songs and asked Katie if she could play them in her rehabilitation centers across India.
“Impressions of Mary Cassatt”, Katie’s first one person show received the National Endowment For the Arts and the Nevada State Council on the Arts. She toured Nevada, California and was asked to perform it for the art program at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Katie resides in Northern California where she founded a music school. She gives concerts, writes and paints as well as offers chanting workshops.
Bio--longer version
Katie Ketchum began performing while she was still a piano and composition student at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, and won several competitions sponsored by Her Majesty, The Queen. She sites her first artistic influence as her father, an inventor and engineer for Howard Hughes; she later learned guitar from her grandfather, who had movie star Roy Rogers in his band.
At the tender age of 24, Ketchum was discovered at the famed Ice House in Pasadena, CA (where legendary comedians Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin were discovered), and received a National Endowment for the Arts for her one person musical on the life of American painter Mary Cassatt. She toured with Cassatt at colleges and theaters, while remaining a theater student at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her tour included performances throughout Nevada and California including the Women's Building in San Francisco, Cinnabar Theater, Luther Burbank Center (Wells Fargo Pavilion) Sands Hotel, and Northwestern University in Illinois.
Ketchum has taken her original music on the road, touring the United States at universities, festivals, and concert halls, where she also advocates the use of alternative energy (the Electric Car association brought their cars to her concert on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.). Her albums have garnered a unique following, including Mother Teresa, who played Ketchum's music in her healing centers throughout India. To date, her compositions make up 15 albums of original work, and four musicals.
For four years before starting the Mary Magdalene show which completed a four week run at the Sacramento Theatre April/May 2008, Ketchum was performing and facilitating children’s theater and music to over 10,000 children in the public schools and privately for approximately 25 hours a week.
Her client list is available by e-mailing her at katieketchumband@bigplanet.com.