In this moment, when visibility for trans people in the media is urgent, vital, confusing, and precarious, composer and sound artist Taul Katz offers something rare: a sonic landscape to hold all of it — beauty, grief, resilience, and shimmering possibility. Katz has just released their debut album Just Kids OST, a luminous, delicate, and immersive collection of music originally composed for Just Kids, a new documentary that centers the stories of three trans kids and their families living in states where gender-affirming care is banned. The score, released in tandem with the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is more than an accompaniment; it is a deeply felt act of witnessing.
In this trans artist 4 trans artist interview, I speak with Taul Katz about their process, their collaboration with the filmmakers, and the emotional and technical work of composing sound for image. We also talk about what it means to listen — really listen — to the truths trans kids share with us, to truths our communities share with us, and how sound might offer us a pathway to imagine more expansive futures.
Taul Katz // photo by Ryley Paskal
LM: My heart expands and aches when I think about trans kids and teens in America today. Somehow, your music captures all of it — the ache of the present and the shimmering outlines of a future still being dreamed up. Can you talk about your approach to composing the music for this project? What guided you as you created sound?
TK: I write from a really emotional place. I need to fully step into the world of whatever I’m working on — to sit with the feeling of it, let it settle in my body, and create from there.
The music is pretty minimal and ambient — it uses processed textures, modular synths, saxophone, harp, and field recordings — but it’s all about feeling.
I wasn’t trying to dramatize the film or guide the emotion too heavily. It was more about holding space — for what the families in the film are going through, and for the broader reality of being trans right now. I wanted it to feel like something you could rest inside of, even if it’s not always comfortable. I tried to make room for complexity, for contradiction, and for care.
Gianna Toboni, Jacqueline Toboni, Samantha Wender and the entire team behind Just Kids did an incredible job making the film feel emotionally whole. It doesn’t lean too heavily into a despairing narrative, even though the subject matter is deeply painful. What’s happening in the U.S. right now — especially under the guise of “protecting children” — is terrifying. But it’s a tricky line to walk: How do you make a film that shows how absurd and dangerous this moment is without turning it into trauma porn? It’s easy to fall into that trap, especially with trans stories. I think it’s essential to hold space for trans joy alongside the pain.
Amen.
When the narrative only focuses on suffering, it reveals something about how people view our community, as if we only exist in relation to harm. That kind of storytelling flattens us. Trans people are complex, joyful, contradictory, funny, angry, ordinary. We deserve to be seen in all of our dimensions — not just the ones that make for a tragic headline.
Dimensional is actually a word that comes to mind when I listen to the album. You weave together so many subtle layers into each track, which creates a really nuanced emotional experience for the listener. Is this something specific to this album or is that approach threaded throughout your work?
I always make music in layers. I’m always thinking about the idea of becoming — not in a linear, before-and-after way, but in the sense that we’re constantly shifting. So in one sense, the dimensionality you’re picking up on is always present in my work. But for this film specifically, I wanted the score to capture these feelings of becoming and transformation that are so fundamental to our adolescent years, and even more so for trans kids. It’s not about resolution or arrival; it’s about staying with the tension, the uncertainty, and the softness that lives inside of hard things.
I love that. I am so fascinated by the work of creating sound. It’s both immaterial and deeply physical. It’s also so personal, which is why I am taken by artists like you who are able to create such a specific feeling and create meaning for people without relying on lyrics or any other more overt modes of storytelling. How do you cultivate and nurture your creativity?
I’m someone who is really involved with my people. I care deeply, I stay in close connection, and I have a freakishly large social battery. I love being in dialogue and sitting with emotion together. That kind of exchange has always been part of how I move through the world and how I make work. But for a long time, I felt conflicted about that, especially as a composer. There’s a strong narrative about what a “serious” creative process is supposed to look like — total isolation, shutting everything and everyone out, disappearing into the work. And I really internalized that. I spent years feeling like I wasn’t doing it right because I wasn’t locking myself in a room and cutting myself off.
But being queer, community isn’t just a preference — it’s a lifeline. So much of how we process and survive is through reflection, care, and conversation. I started realizing that these connections don’t take away from my work and my creativity — they actually shape it. That said, I also really value and need time alone. I need space to let things settle, to metabolize what’s come up, and to write from that quieter place. It’s just that my solitude isn’t separate from my community — it exists in rhythm with it. I finally let go of this rigid idea of what my process should look like and allowed it to reflect how I actually live and create.
That’s beautiful. I think maturing as an artist is, in part, about observing, accepting, and nurturing our unique process of making. Speaking of maturity — the kids in the film hold so many nuggets of wisdom. Did you learn anything from the trans kids featured in the film? I imagine you spent so many hours with them through watching all the footage over and over…
Yes, absolutely. Sitting with the footage — over and over, for hours — taught me a lot. I feel genuinely grateful to have gotten to know everyone in that way. One of the biggest things I took from it was how important it is to stay soft and open, even in the face of everything happening right now.
Anger is necessary — and I think it’s important to let yourself feel it — but it can also start to calcify into something that narrows how you see the world. That kind of rigidity makes it hard to connect, to feel, to respond with care. Staying soft isn’t the opposite of resistance — it’s a part of it.
The kids reminded me of the kind of artist I want to be — someone who doesn’t have to harden or flatten in order to be understood. Being with their voices and expressions for so long moved me deeply. It shaped not just the score, but also how I think about care and resistance.
Taul Katz is a composer and sound designer based between New York and Paris. Their debut album, Just Kids OST is a sonic journey that balances subtlety with a kind of cosmic beauty, offering a profound sense of care and reverence for the trans community.
It’s now available to stream.
JUST KIDS is a new documentary film from director Gianna Toboni, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7.
