Cristi Catt was just a third-grader when she met Aaron Copland at Kansas University.

The celebrated American composer was in Lawrence to oversee a KU production of his opera “The Tender Land,” and the young Catt had a singing role. She remembers sitting on Copland’s lap.

“That’s when it hit me that I wanted to be a big part of this world,” says Catt, a graduate of Lawrence High School and KU. “I wanted in.”

Given the soprano’s most recent musical accomplishment, it’s safe to say she’s made it.

Catt is a founding member of a Boston-based choral group that will receive an ECHO Klassik prize on Sunday in Munich, Germany. The award, often equated to the American Grammy, is one of the most prestigious music prizes in the world.

“It was funny. I didn’t really understand what it meant when we got it,” Catt says from her home in Cambridge, Mass. “Our agent, who’s from Belgium, called and left this message on my machine. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying because she was so excited.

“Now I’m excited that I understand. It’s wonderful for us.”

Tapestry was recognized for its recording “Sapphire Night” on the German MDG label, featuring music by 12th-century female composer Hildegard von Bingen and contemporary Boston composer Patricia van Ness, who frequently writes music especially for the quartet. The other two recipients in the Choral Recording of the Year category are Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Radio for its recording of “Carmina Burana.”

Lawrence native Cristi Catt, far right, is a founding member of the choral quartet Tapestry, which has received an ECHO Klassik Prize for its most recent recording. Other group members are, from left, Carolann Buff, Daniela Tosic and Laurie Monahan.

“The people who have won it are much more well-known than we are,” Catt says, “but hopefully that will help us.”

Special recording

Tapestry had previously recorded four albums with the American label Telarc but jumped to MDG in 2003 to create “Sapphire Night.” Rather than using microphones pointed at singers’ mouths and then mixing the sound later, Catt says, MDG technicians record acoustical space, placing mics at carefully selected spots in a room and capturing the overall performance.

“We recorded it in a cathedral in Mandelsloh, Germany, that parts of were built in the Middle Ages, so the acoustics were just amazing,” she says. “It’s a tiny little town out in the middle of the farmlands in northern Germany.

“The only sound we had to worry about was that every night at 6 o’clock the cows would come in and we’d have to stop recording because of all the bells that would be ringing,” she adds, laughing.

Catt grew up in Lawrence, performing in choirs and musicals at LHS and studying voice at KU with Phyllis Brill.

“I had a lot of opportunities to perform in Lawrence and a lot of support,” recalls Catt, now 41. “I had a wonderful teacher, Phyllis Brill, who gave me a strong technique that I can take with me, and I can go out and do concert after concert and still have a voice.”

Finding harmony

After graduating from KU in 1987, Catt pursued post-graduate studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and later received a master’s degree in early music from Longy School of Music in Boston.

In fact, Catt moved to Boston because she had been hypnotized by the voice of mezzo-soprano Laurie Monahan.

“I actually was living in New York and I heard her on a recording and promptly moved up here and found her and asked if I could study with her because I was so amazed by her sound,” Catt says.

• Audio clips from “Sapphire Night”
• O Frondens Virga
• Dominationes

Alto Daniela Tosic ended up in Boston for the same reason, and when she and Catt graduated, they founded Tapestry with Monahan. Mezzo-soprano Carolann Buff rounded out the foursome on “Sapphire Night.”

“Their sound is just incredible,” says Catt’s father, George Catt, an attorney who lives in Lawrence with his wife, Sherry. “It’s absolutely polyphonic. These are four highly tuned musical instruments – it just happens to be their voices. They really have a nice sound.

“With this award, the recording studio wants them back ASAP to trade on this notoriety.”

‘Very proud’

In addition to her work with Tapestry, Cristi Catt has performed in concerts and theatrical productions throughout the United States and Europe, including appearances at Tanglewood, the Holland Festival and the Bergen Festival in Norway. She has appeared with leading early music ensembles such as Ensemble PAN, Revels and Boston Camerata.

As a result of her interest in meeting points between medieval and folk traditions, she is a co-founder of the medieval/world music ensemble HourGlass, and also appears with the French folk band, Le Bon Vont and Balmus, an ensemble specializing in Balkan and Byzantine-influenced musical traditions.

She has served as music director for productions of Shakespearean comedies in Boston and New York and directed an Italian tour of Hildegard Von Bingen’s “Ordo Virtutem.”

“She’s been very dedicated as far as studying music and very interested in it,” George Catt says. “Her mom and I are very proud of her.”