Meet KatzPascale, the chamber music duo putting audiences in a trance

During KatzPascale’s first show in Leeds earlier this summer, a 55-year-old man cried for the first time since his wedding. In their video diary of the tour, he appears on grainy film, bewildered as he and his wife tell the camera, as if delivering a testimony, how, before that night, tears hadn’t fallen from his eyes since 2001. READ MORE: NME’s top 10 shows from The Great Escape 2026 The response isn’t uncommon for the live shows of saxophonist Sammi Katzmann and cellist/vocalist Jenna Pascale, where audience members pour into the streets afterwards, heralding the experience as a catharsis, an awakening, perhaps even an exorcism. Since the first moment they began collaborating, they’ve carved out an eclectic, cinematic take on neo-classical, able to stir dormant emotions in even the most stoic. Though previous coverage of the project may allude to the fact that Katzmann and Pascale met through a mutual friend, they tell NME a different story. After briefly colluding with each other, they explain in a deadpan manner that their first meeting actually took place when Katzmann was lifeguarding in Connecticut, and Pascale was drowning. “And also being attacked by a shark,” Pascale rec...