My Story
A lifelong love of music that finally found its stage
Born and raised in East Germany, Katja grew up in a deeply musical family. Her father was a professional violinist, and her mother played several instruments and sang. Music was simply part of everyday life, and Katja was exposed to a wide range of styles—from classical music and jazz to folk, musicals, and rock.
Katja started singing as soon as she could talk. She learned some basic guitar skills and immediately put them to use accompanying her voice. As a young girl, she received three years of classical vocal training, sang in several choirs and music groups, and eventually started singing groups of her own. Although music was always an important part of her life, performing publicly was something that would come much later.
For most of her adult life, Katja always had a guitar and would sing from time to time, but she never considered herself a performing musician. That began to change about five years ago when a couple of her yoga students/ musicians Brian Howe and Rene Wold encouraged her to join them as a harmony singer for two gigs. She even played two songs on her own. One of them was “Morning Morgantown” by Joni Mitchell. Katja remembers being completely freaked out by the experience.
Then things went quiet for another couple of years.
A friend, cellist Rene Wold, eventually asked Katja to accompany her at a coffeehouse gig while Rene’s regular musicians were away. The two practiced a duet program, with Katja as lead singer and guitarist and Renee providing harmony vocals and cello. The response was so positive that they continued performing together for a while.
The turning point
Then, during a Colorado summer trip in 2023, another friend, Barbara Seeling, suggested that Katja simply go to a local coffeehouse and try performing on her own.
So she did.
Katja played at The View in Colorado for approximately 15 people.
And, as she puts it, that was just about the right number of people.
That small performance became the beginning of something much bigger. Katja started performing regularly and discovered that the stage wasn’t something to be afraid of after all—it was a place where she could share something she had loved her entire life.
Today, Katja performs exclusively as a solo singer and guitarist. Her music is rooted in the songs and artists she has loved across the years, with a particular affection for the late 1960s through the 1980s.
Her repertoire moves freely between female singer-songwriters such as Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Judy Collins, and Dolly Parton, and artists including Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, ELO, Supertramp, the Eurythmics, and the Beatles. She also enjoys finding less-obvious songs and occasionally stepping outside that era for a classic standard or even a musical-theatre tune.
What ties it all together isn’t a particular genre.
It’s the song.
Katja is drawn to beautiful, melodious tunes and music that sounds good simply because it is a great song. Her guitar playing combines solid chords and rhythm with arpeggiated and freestyle picking, while her clear, clean voice has been described by audiences as beautiful and sweet.
And perhaps one of the most consistent comments she hears from musicians and listeners is that she is always on key—a quality she attributes to the combination of her voice and her natural musical hearing.
For Katja, performing isn’t about putting on a show for the sake of a show it is about taking a song and making it her own, touching people with her vibes. It’s about sharing songs she genuinely loves, finding the right song for the moment, and creating an atmosphere where people can relax, listen, remember, and sometimes discover something completely unexpected.