Called “spellbinding” (Seen and Heard International) with “glow and poise and electric tension” (The Daily Telegraph), the music of composer Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination, discovery, and textural lyricism. Inspired by the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes, she has been described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, l’Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Fontainebleau Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in France, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. Her work has been presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.
Winner of the 2020-2021 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Katherine was nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award. She has also been honored by ASCAP, BMI, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.
Katherine was the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony, where she was lauded by the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She has also served as composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Inc.
FACTS
1. Mosquitos are very attracted to me, and
2. I live in the woods by a pond,
3. Therefore, from May-September I am very itchy.
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Tiny living things.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
When I started songwriting and playing in bands as a middle-schooler.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
This is an impossible question, so I will just do 5 recent albums that I’ve loved: Ekmeles’s We Live the Opposite of Daring (2024), Bright Chaimbeul’s The Reeling, Taylor Brook’s Virtues Occultae, Berlin Philharmonic / Sunwook Kim / Sakari Oramo’s recording of Unsuk Chin’s Piano Concerto, Beyonce, Cowboy Carter
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Techno and just intonation.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Two places associated with two favorite activities: happy hour at Hachiroku, a sake bar in New Haven, then walking over to Yale University’s Sprague Hall, to hear my students and colleagues perform
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Garden and farm. Which is kind of what I do when I’m not interacting with music anyways.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Kate Soper’s The Hunt
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
The Berlin Philharmonic!
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Performing found-object compositions by my 9-year-old students at a summer camp.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Very important, or, as important as it isn’t, if that makes sense?
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/music?
Yes I have an older brother and he is very proud of and confused by me (he is a surgeon).
