Dr. Katherine Pukinskis

Assistant Professor of Music
Chair, Contemporary Creative Practice Division

Bio

Katherine Pukinskis is a composer-scholar whose work often brings unlikely text or content into conversation in the concert hall. Her work explores storytelling and voice—tracking how words and ideas travel in music, across the world, and over time. Dr. Pukinskis has had works premiered by eighth blackbird, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Akron Symphony Chorus, and the Spektral Quartet, as well as by members of Ensemble Dal Niente, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Commissioning ensembles include San Antonio Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Agarita Chamber Players (supported by the MAP fund), Heritage Chorale, the Esoterics Choir, Agarita Chamber Players, and Nuorten Kuoroliitto (Helsinki Finland).

Dr. Pukinskis’s scholarly research revolves around notions of cultural identity, diaspora, traditional folk and choral music, and activism, with particular emphasis on the choral music of Latvia and 20th-century American Art Song. She has presented her research across the United States and Europe in conferences, pre-concert lectures, and invited talks, including plenary lectures at the College Music Society’s International Conference (2023) and the Twentieth International Conference on the Arts in Society (2025). Pukinskis co-edited Baltic Musics Beyond the Post Soviet (University of Tartu Press, 2024), a collection of essays and conversations bringing together different generations of scholars and artists to continue along critical new paths in Baltic cultural studies from the position of sound and music.

Before joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Pukinskis held faculty positions at Amherst College, Harvard University, and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. 

www.kpukinskis.com

Education

PhD Composition (research focus Ethnomusicology) 2016, University of Chicago

MM Composition 2010, Carnegie Mellon University

BFA Composition 2008, Carnegie Mellon University