Katie Webster

Bio

Katie Webster is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser based out of Brooklyn, NYC, and is originally from Seattle, WA. Her work captures a bold and expressive approach to improvisation and composition. She is passionate about centering the communal and collective aspects of musical process.

Katie has performed at renowned international venues including Bird's Eye Jazz Club, Porgy and Bess, The Loft Köln, A-Trane Berlin, Bern International Jazz Festival, The Royal Room, Vermont Jazz Center, Monterey Jazz Festival, and Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. She has performed in bands led by artists such as Tony Malaby, Pablo Held, and Julia Hülsmann. Fascinated by the relationship between music, storytelling, and visual media, she released an EP in August 2024 from her ongoing project Within the Garden We Planted, a growing series of interdisciplinary tributes to women activists throughout history.

As a bandleader and collaborator, Katie’s recent work includes projects such as LoomTone (sextet, co-led with Miranda Ingram Agnew), New Web (quartet, co-led with Agnew), Amaranth (quartet, co-led with Anna Fortuna), and the Katie Webster Group. In February-March 2025, she was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in music composition, where she and Agnew composed for LoomTone, co-writing for improvising musicians featuring voice, alto saxophone, trumpet, cello, bass, and drums. As both bandleader and side person, she performs regularly in New York venues such as Close Up, Sisters BK, Ibeam, and Nublu.

Katie is the recipient of the 2025 ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award, and the 2025 ASCAP Foundation Phoebe Jacobs Prize. She has performed as a featured soloist with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Basel Jazz Orchestra, Keep an Eye Large Ensemble, and the 2023 GRAMMY Museum Affiliate Collective. She is an awardee of the 2023/24 Focusyear Fellowship in Basel, Switzerland, where the ensemble performed regularly with internationally recognized musicians such as Wolfgang Muthspiel, Sara Serpa, Guillermo Klein, Lionel Loueke, and Ingrid Jensen; the band’s album, Nine Realms, was released in June 2024. In 2022, she received a commission from MassArt Art Museum and the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice in collaboration with Joana Vasconcelos’ The Valkyrie.

She is also a recipient of the Jimmy Lyons Scholarship presented by Berklee in conjunction with the Monterey Jazz Festival. A 2022 graduate of Berklee College of Music, Katie went on to pursue her Master’s degree at the Global Jazz Institute, studying with Danilo Pérez, Joe Lovano, Tony Malaby, George Garzone, and Francisco Mela.