Cassandra Kaczor is a Chicago-based composer, pianist and multimedia artist focused on issues of social justice and women’s empowerment.
Kaczor has produced a musical, ballet, several short film scores and many multimedia pieces with other artists. She previously worked concert curator at Awakenings Foundation, a space that focuses on the work of sexual assault and abuse survivors, after receiving their Judith Dawn Memorial Fund Grant (2015). She was also an Artistic Collaborator and consultant on musical matters for The Sunflower Project.
Kaczor has her Master's degree in Music Composition as a Performing Arts Scholar from Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, where she studied privately with Dr. Kyong Mee Choi. She won the Michael Hall Viola Composition Competition (2017) and the Zodiac Trio Competition (2016) during her graduate career. Prior to this she studied with Curtis Curtis-Smith and Christopher Biggs at Western Michigan University.
Kaczor was awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the I-Park International Artist-in-Residence Program in 2018.
Kaczor currently works as a professional pianist and singer at Pete's Dueling Piano Bar in Rosemont, IL, and as a freelance teacher, performer and composer. She was most recently featured on the program of the Chicago Composers Consortium (2019). When she is not working, Kaczor enjoys practicing yoga, feministing, songwriting, long runs on Lake Michigan, ogling strangers' dogs while out walking, good drinks, tolerable company, and chronically overthinking as much as possible.
Kaczor has produced a musical, ballet, several short film scores and many multimedia pieces with other artists. She previously worked concert curator at Awakenings Foundation, a space that focuses on the work of sexual assault and abuse survivors, after receiving their Judith Dawn Memorial Fund Grant (2015). She was also an Artistic Collaborator and consultant on musical matters for The Sunflower Project.
Kaczor has her Master's degree in Music Composition as a Performing Arts Scholar from Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, where she studied privately with Dr. Kyong Mee Choi. She won the Michael Hall Viola Composition Competition (2017) and the Zodiac Trio Competition (2016) during her graduate career. Prior to this she studied with Curtis Curtis-Smith and Christopher Biggs at Western Michigan University.
Kaczor was awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the I-Park International Artist-in-Residence Program in 2018.
Kaczor currently works as a professional pianist and singer at Pete's Dueling Piano Bar in Rosemont, IL, and as a freelance teacher, performer and composer. She was most recently featured on the program of the Chicago Composers Consortium (2019). When she is not working, Kaczor enjoys practicing yoga, feministing, songwriting, long runs on Lake Michigan, ogling strangers' dogs while out walking, good drinks, tolerable company, and chronically overthinking as much as possible.
Photo credit: A. Deran Photography