Forget words like pastoral, tender and lyrical when describing the music of The Great Kat. In the hyperspeed world of this ax-wielding Julliard graduate, sound and fury is the coin of the realm. The sturm und drang of Beethoven is the musical prototype that inspires Kat's sound as she takes flight into a hailstorm of sharp-edged sixteenth notes.

The effect is exhilarating, and this is just the effect Kat means to achieve. Her music is a wake-up call for the 21st century and an invitation to rediscover the greatness of the Golden Age of classical music by revitalizing it with electricity, technology and old-fashioned, hard-earned technical fluency.

Kat - I consider everyone after Beethoven to be pretty much bullshit. Classical music was destroyed by everyone who came after Beethoven because of one simple problem. They were not virtuosos. To be a brilliant composer you have to be a virtuoso. Why? Because if you can't make people excited on your instrument, the music you compose is going to be boring too.

The really brilliant composers, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, have one thing in common: they all have virtuosity on their instruments. If you can't be a genius performer, then you're certainly not going to be a genius composer.


What do you think is the reason for the lack of virtuoso composers since that era?

Kat - They don't have the masochistic personalities! Listen, for somebody to be a genius, like Shakespeare or Mozart or Beethoven or Di Vinci or Van Gogh, you need a specific personality.

First of all, you have to be a torturous personality like I am, to sit yourself down for 12 hours a day and play violin, go to Julliard and put up with all that shit.

Secondly, you have to have a personality that is totally outrageous and not conforming. So it's not just the virtuosity, it's the personality that goes with the technique. I mean, Itzak Perlman's a fuckin' virtuoso, that's fine. But he's still a post office worker because he can't go out and compose the stuff himself. So I don't care how fast he plays the violin. I would pick Slayer over Perlman because Slayer writes their own shit.

So, basically, there's been alot of slackers for the last couple of centuries or more?

Kat - Basically, there hasn't been anybody that's been updating classical music. They let it just die. Ever since Wagner decided to destroy it 200 years ago. He was an actor and he decided to take classical music and put it as a backdrop to his theatrical productions. He didn't really know what he was doing, so he made it really long winded and boring. Wagner wouldn't listen to Wagner if he was alive today. Who wants sit down and listen to a three hour opera? I certainly don't. I won't even listen to a 10 minute opera. So everything has to go with the future, this is the future.

What do you think music is going to sound like in the year 2020?

Kat - Here's what the 21st century is going to sound like: fast, fast, fast. Things will get faster, they will get shorter. We used to have 3 hour operas, now we have half-hour TV shows. Soon that will be a joke. 'Cause this is the fuckin' future, ya know, it's fast, it's vicious, it's loud, and it's aggressive. So music in the 21st century is going to be fast, it's going to be cyber-speed, it's going to be a little techno, it's going to be everything thrown in.

Do you have a vision of how technology and music will combine in the future in terms of performance and music presentation?

Kat - Technology will be part of the music, there's no doubt about it. The point of multi-media is to present the brilliance of composers. For my CD Beethoven on Cyberspeed, I spent a whole year of my life researching everything from cyber composers to cyber orchestra, writing everything, composing and producing the music.

The reason why I like multi-media products like CD ROMS is that viewers can see the outrageousness, the eccentricity of the Great Kat and then listen to music, rather than just hearing my music and saying what the hell is this? They don't understand it, it's too fast, it zooms right over their heads. With multi-media, they get to see my personality, they get to see my outrageousness, they get to see the music and then when they hear the music, BAM! it goes right in their brain, it says 'wake up' and they understand it.

Listening to Beethoven without knowing he's deaf doesn't make as much impact. Or Van Gogh, without knowing his fate, or his pain, and that he chopped off his ear. You've got to have a little background on the artist.


What's it like being an outspoken female in a male-dominated part of the music culture?

Kat - You always have to put up with the shit and being a female makes it sixty times harder... no, a million times harder than being a male, because when I got into the whole metal scene, I was blackballed, threatened, I got death threats, harrassment, you name it, for calling myself the Great Kat, for being a woman, for being a virtuoso. They don't like it. I make them look bad.