IONSOUND PROJECT

Kathleen Costello, Clarinet
Elisa Kohanski, Cello
​Jack Kurutz, Piano

Who We Are
Chamber music ensemble IonSound Project is clarinetist Kathleen Costello, cellist Elisa Kohanski, and pianist Jack Kurutz.  IonSound seeks to add to Pittsburgh's cultural life by programming innovative concerts, commissioning works of new music, pursuing collaborations, and exploring the boundaries between concert and popular music.  The members of IonSound Project endeavor to act as musical ambassadors by means of community engagement and education initiatives.  

Since giving its first concert in 2004, the ensemble has presented more than 80 works by 20th and 21st century composers, demonstrating an ongoing dedication to promoting the work of established and emerging composers from the Pittsburgh region and across the country.  In 2008, IonSound Project became the Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Pittsburgh for the following decade, the first appointment of its kind in the history of the University.  IonSound has also received grants and funding to work with students in the public and private schools in the Pittsburgh area.  These relationships have gone beyond the sharing of instrumental music, with projects as varied as teaching students to invent and build their own instruments, and creating workshops where students learn to compose their own music.  

Praised by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for “exemplary taste” in programming and for playing that “generates sparks,” IonSound has performed in a wide variety of spaces ranging from the traditional concert hall, to a whiskey distillery, to a construction site.  Likewise, their artistic collaborators have ranged from local dance ensembles, to poets, to visual artists, to roboticists, to social practice artists -- just to name a few.  A collection of film and video collaborations commissioned to be performed with works by composer Phil Thompson, titled 'Separate Self,' was recorded by IonSound Project in 2015.  IonSound is also featured on a disc of Jeremy Beck's music, and can be found on the INNOVA label.  IonSound Project is 501-c3 organization, and can receive tax deductible donations at any time.