Kat Reinhert, PhD, is an accomplished performer, songwriter, voice teacher, and educator. Kat specializes in contemporary voice, songwriting, jazz, piano, and popular music pedagogy and curriculum.
Reinhert is currently a Full Time Full Professor of Songwriting at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, as well as Berklee NYC where she teaches songwriting, lyric writing, creativity and performance courses. She is also the co-founder of the company Songwriting for Music Educators, empowering music educators from all areas to not only write their own songs, but help their students explore songwriting.
Previously , she was an adjunct Assistant Professor at Rider University where she taught Pop Songwriting, Pop Arranging and Pop Theory, a Professor in the Voice Department at Berklee School of Music, Boston, MA, and an adjunct voice professor at The New School in NYC.
From 2017-2019, she was the Director of Contemporary Voice at University of Miami Frost School of Music, where she served on faculty within the Music Media and Industry program which includes the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music minor and the Musicianship, Artistry Development and Entrepreneurship (M.A.D.E.) Major.
She is a sought-after pedagogue, clinician and consultant for students, practitioners and institutions involved in all aspects and levels of popular music education, contemporary voice and songwriting. As a private instructor, her passion is helping artists find their voices through self-discover and vocal technique. Her students have gone on to have measurable success in the music industry. They include Hunjia, Leila Sunier, Katie Cunningham, members of KidSistr, Ahli, Emia, Souvenir, Liam O’Brian, Eitan Snyder and Zola.
After completing her undergraduate degree at The Manhattan School of Music in Jazz/Commercial voice (1999), Ms. Reinhert began teaching in New York City through the non-profit organization Education Through Music (ETM). Through this program, she gained valuable teaching experience in K-12 general music settings. After leaving ETM and NYC to pursue a Masters Degree in Jazz Pedagogy from The University of Miami Frost School of Music, (2007) she returned to New York and began freelancing as a teaching artist and voice teacher in various schools in NYC including P.S.86 in the Bronx and The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY.
Through these experiences, Kat discovered a passion for teaching, especially for pre-professional and professional level students. This led her to pursue a PhD in Music Education from the University of Miami Frost School of Music (2018), specializing in popular music education in higher eduction settings. Her dissertation, completed in the spring of 2018, is a qualitative multiple case study on the development and implementation of the popular music programs at The University of Southern California (USC) and The University of Miami Frost School of Music (UM).
Dr. Reinhert has held numerous adjunct professor at several universities. She is a frequent presenter at both national and international conferences including The Voice Foundation, The International Association for Music Education and The International Jazz Voice Conference and a past President of the board for the Association for Popular Music Education.
In 2021, alongside Sarah Gulish, she co-founded Songwriting for Music Educators, a company dedicated to empowering music educators from all fields and disciplines to engage with their own creativity, write songs, and empower their students write songs.
Ms. Reinhert currently resides in New York City, where in addition to commuting to Boston, she can be found performing, teaching, running her own business, mentoring, and giving masterclasses and workshops on songwriting, contemporary voice and curriculum.