Family

Catherine Beeson

Posted:January, 23 2015

Catherine Beeson, Viola, has been Assistant Principal Viola of the Colorado Symphony since joining the orchestra in 1999. She is a native of Texas, spending much of her formative years taking care of various livestock and trying to stay out of trouble. (Little known true fact, Catherine won a trophy for barrel racing in her local east Texas rodeo at age 5.) Fortunately the violin (at age 9, approximately a gazillion years ago), and then viola (beginning in 1991) has kept her in the practice room and pretty much out of harm’s way.

Nowadays Catherine is unleashed upon the communities of the Denver Metro area teaching at Regis University, leading a public school composition and performance based residency program for Friends of Chamber Music (Denver), and playing chamber music concerts regularly with her amazing colleagues on both the Englewood Arts Presents and Denver Eclectic Concerts series. Catherine’s off campus activities include performing with the Lenape Chamber Ensemble (Philadelphia), Santa Fe ProMusica chamber orchestra, and Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra (NY).

Catherine is a musical arts community builder. She leads workshops for adults and children whenever possible. She has designed and published teachers’ guides and lesson plans to support the education and outreach endeavors of the New York Philharmonic, Up Close and Musical Orchestra (Denver), and Friends of Chamber Music. She has made video ads promoting the Englewood Arts Presents concerts on social media websites. And she served as Artistic Director of the Loon Lake Live summer chamber music series in the northern Adirondack mountains of New York since its inception, building a chamber music concert series tradition in small communities there over 15 years.

In her “spare” time Catherine enjoys hanging out with her family, reading, cooking and canning all sorts of tasty stuff. She also makes sure to attend the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo at least twice each January so as not to stray too far from her roots.

Catherine is a co-chair and major planner for the Haydn Quartet Slam, in which all 83 Haydn string quartets will be performed in Colorado by the CCP, Denver Eclectic Concerts, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and other arts groups.