About me
Katherine Pukinskis (b. 1986) is a composer and scholar based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work explores storytelling and voice—tracking how words and ideas travel in music, across the world, and over time. Pukinskis has had compositions premiered by eighth blackbird, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Akron Symphony Chorus, and the Spektral Quartet, and by members of Ensemble Dal Niente and the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Commissioning ensembles include the San Antonio Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Heritage Chorale, the Esoterics Choir (POLYPHONOS winner, 2018-2019), Mägi Ensemble (ACDA National Conference 2023), Camerata Nova (50 for 50 commissioning grant winner, IDRS 2025) and Nuorten Kuoroliitto (Helsinki Finland).
An advocate of under-represented voices in western classical music, Pukinskis’s work brings unlikely content into conversation in the concert hall. A project started by a 2019 commission from the Esoterics (“A Choice Informed”) sets dissents written by female Supreme Court Justices of the United States. In 2025, Agarita Chamber Players premiered “One in Four, One in Eight,” a concert-length work which calls attention to the intersection of clinical medicine and the highly individualized, embodied experiences of infertility and pregnancy loss.
Dr. Pukinskis’s scholarly work centers cultural identity, diaspora, and choral music in Latvia, with a secondary area in contemporary musical theater. 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. Pukinskis is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining the faculty at CMU, Dr. Pukinskis held faculty positions at Amherst College, Harvard University, and the Longy School of Music at Bard College.
Education
PhD Composition (research focus Ethnomusicology) 2016, University of Chicago
MM Composition 2010, Carnegie Mellon University
BFA Composition 2008, Carnegie Mellon University
Contact me
katherine @ pukinskis . org
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