Kate Romano

Clarinetist Kate Romano specializes in contemporary music and is the director of the Goldfield Ensemble, a multimedia group performing productions in various forms. She is also a composer. Romano grew up in the Derbyshire region in England's East Midlands. Her family was not musical, but early on, she showed the ability to learn pieces by ear, and she began taking clarinet lessons in school when she was ten and played in a local wind band. Romano attended the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. She was unsure about a career as an orchestral clarinetist, but she was fascinated by Manchester's urban scene, not only music but theaters, museums, art galleries, and architecture. Romano changed her course of study, combining clarinet performance with composition courses from Tony Gilbert. On the clarinet, she gravitated toward contemporary chamber music and participated in a performance of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King. She also took master classes from clarinetist Alan Hacker. Romano went on to Cambridge University for a master's degree and Kings College London for a Ph.D., studying composition and contemporary performance practice at both places. For some years, she was most active as a clarinetist specializing in contemporary music. She made a recording, Contours, on the Metier label in 2005 and began teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Performing both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, Romano premiered more than 100 new works and appeared at a variety of British music festivals. Then, when Romano was in her late 30s, a co-worker pointed out how "theatrically" she described things, and that became a light-bulb moment; she realized that she wanted to be part of the theater world. Although she had little experience as an entrepreneur or organization executive, Romano founded Goldfield Productions and the associated Goldfield Ensemble, which creates what it calls "adventures in sound" in collaboration with composers, puppeteers, writers, artists, animators, inventors, and more with chamber music remaining at the center. In 2012, the group presented composer Nicola LeFanu's opera Tokaido Road, despite the fact that Romano, by her own admission, knew nothing about producing opera; the show raised a budget of 170,000 GBP and toured in eight cities. The Goldfield Ensemble released the album Erika Fox: Paths in 2019. Romano has continued to perform as a clarinetist, appearing on the NMC label in 2021 on the album Julian Philips: Melodys of Earth and Sky.
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