The Great Kat April 9, 2012
 

Roll Over Beethoven: The Great Kat’s ‘Beethoven Shreds’ restyles famed composer

Phyllis Pollack  Rock Music Examiner

The Great Kat, whose 34 videos have collectively received over one million hits on YouTube, has released her eleventh album. Appropriately titled “Beethoven Shreds,” a speed demon version of five revered classical tracks served up Great Kat style on guitar, with two original songs.

Dressed up in metal, the disc includes her lightening speed versions of the iconic classics Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight Of The Bumble Bee” Beethoven’s “5th Symphony,” Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto #3” and “The Art of the Fugue,” Paganini’s “Caprice #24.”

Two original tracks, the scream fest “Torture Techniques” and “IslamoFascists,” are also included.

Guitar World Magazine called her one of the world’s “greatest female guitarists,” and Guitar One Magazine called her one of the “top ten shredders of all time.” Gibson Lifestyle raised that, listing her as being among “eight of the world’s fastest shredders.” Guitar Player Magazine referred to her as being one of “twenty extraordinary female guitarists.”

 

Combining her love of all things metal with her knowledge of classical music, the album is a whirlwind look at Beethoven gone metal.

In addition to playing guitar on the album, Kat also edited, arranged and orchestrated the scores on the self-produced album.

An accomplished musician, the Great Kat graduated as a violin virtuoso the prestigious Juilliard School of music. She had started playing piano at the age of seven, and violin at nine. Kat, who won the “Robert Hufstader Scholarship” in music theory, graduated with honors.

Lacing virtuosity with speed, she calls her tracks “classical music for the twenty-first century.”

After touring and coming to a conclusion that classical music is “dead,” the New York based guitarist began transcribing violin solos to guitar, and playing them at lightening speed. Working with instruments and midi, she has recorded and put a heavy metal touch on a large range of classical works.

Born Katherine Tomas in Swindon, England, in a U.S. Air Force military hospital, she moved to the U.S. at age three.

Also shredding Beethoven pieces to death with her Gibson Flying V, her Beethoven’s “Guitar Shred” DVD is featured on the official website for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

“Beethoven Shreds” also features two tracks with harpsichord. In addition to guitar, she can also be heard playing violin on the disc.

Kat has tirelessly transcribed scores of classical pieces, and uploaded video of herself, playing them, along with the related guitar tabs. She also programs these scores into her music-notation software.

States Kat, “I’ve proven that women can not only be guitar virtuoso, but a virtuoso with two instruments.”