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Home · Celebrity

Former ‘Saturday Night Live’ Musical Director Katreese Barnes Passes Away At 56

Several members of the SNL family took to social media to pay tribute to Barnes following the news of her passing.
Former ‘Saturday Night Live’ Musical Director Katreese Barnes Passes Away At 56
By Kimberly Wilson · Updated October 23, 2020

The music business has lost a real one.

Former Saturday Night Live musical director and producer Katreese Barnes passed away on August 3 at the age of 56 following a decades-long fight with breast cancer, according to a report from the NY Times.

Before joining SNL as a pianist in 2001, she had a band with her brother Jerry called Juicy, and they were signed to Arista Records in the 1980s. The group released three albums, including It Takes Two and quickly became well-known on New York’s music scene. The group’s popularity increased following their work with Roberta Flack as co-producers on her Grammy-nominated, self-titled album released in 1994.

After working her way to music director for the show, Barnes remained at SNL until 2009. SNL writers John Mulaney and Seth Meyers took to social media to pay tribute to their former co-worker following news of her death. “Katreese was great,” Meyers tweeted. 

Katreese was great. Sketch writers, many with no rhythm and terrible voices, would come to her with song ideas and she would turn them into gold https://t.co/iA3Iri6sKE

— Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers) August 19, 2019

“Sketch writers, many with no rhythm and terrible voices, would come to her with song ideas and she would turn them into gold.”

View this post on Instagram

Katreese Barnes would sit with me and many other writers on Wednesday mornings sometimes an hour before SNL read through. She would write beautiful and hilarious songs out of my tone deaf warbling of lyrics. She and @sethmeyers and I won an Emmy together and boy did she deserve all 3 statues. I just heard she died. She was patient and funny and a musical powerhouse. Goodbye Katreese and thank you for every Wednesday morning.

A post shared by John Mulaney (@johnmulaney) on Aug 18, 2019 at 6:47pm PDT

“Katreese Barnes would sit with me and many other writers on Wednesday mornings sometimes an hour before SNL read through,” Mulaney said a message shared on his Instagram page. “She would write beautiful and hilarious songs out of my tone deaf warbling of lyrics.”

He concluded, “Thank you for every Wednesday morning.”

TOPICS:  Katreese Barnes Saturday Night Live
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