Born in Zagreb in 1971, Katarina Horvat began her study of the cello at the age of seven. She continued her training at the Academy of Music in Zagreb before coming to the United States in 1992 on a scholarship, and received the degree of Master of Music in cello performance, with distinction, in 1996.

Since the 1996–97 season Miss Horvat has held the position of section cellist with the Greenbrook Symphony Orchestra in northern Ohio. She is a founding member of the Linden String Quartet, which presents a spring series of chamber concerts at the Greenbrook Public Library, and she maintains a small private studio of young cellists.

Her distinctions include first prize in the junior division of a national competition for young string players (Zagreb, 1986) and a prize at the Northern Ohio Young Artists Concerto Competition (1995), where she performed the Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, of Antonín Dvořák.

In the 1999–2000 season she will perform the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello of Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 1007–1012, in two recitals.

Miss Horvat performs on a cello made in Mittenwald, Germany, around 1890.

P.S.

We are taught to write these in the third person, and reading it back I sound like someone I would be nervous to sit next to in rehearsal. So, a few things the program never prints.

My grandmother bought my first cello, a quarter-size, with money she had been saving for a new winter coat. She still lives in Zagreb and still wears the old coat. Every Sunday she telephones and asks two questions: have I eaten, and did I practice. I lie about one of them, and she knows which.

I live with a gray cat named Pablo, after Casals. He sleeps in the open cello case, which is forbidden, and which I permit.

I am afraid of flying. The cello must have its own seat and its own ticket, and the airline prints it as "Cello Horvat." I hold its neck through the whole takeoff. I do not know which of us is more frightened. The cello, at least, pretends better.

If you are a cellist who also dislikes airplanes, or you have simply read this far, you are welcome to write.