Musical America Worldwide
New Artist of the Month (September 2020)
“The first thing a listener is apt to notice about the music of composer Katherine Balch is its combination of familiarity and other-worldliness. The harmonies and rhythms that underlie much of her work are fundamentally akin to those of Schubert, Brahms, and the other composers whose music she grew up playing on the piano. But those musical frameworks come cloaked in sonorities that are eerie and elusive — a blend of unorthodox orchestration, deftly extended instrumental techniques, and a gentle but determined push against the predictable.”
— Joshua Kosman
NewMusicBox
Mentor, me: a four-part reflection on female mentorship
“My mom, a professor in the sciences, whimsically refers to her PhD adviser as her “tor-mentor”. While the exact ratio of joke-to-truth in this pun is still unclear to me, I grew up in a family of teachers and academics hearing over and over again that the lines between mentor and tormenter, mentor and family, mentor and friend, mentor and colleague, mentor and therapist, etc., are thin as spider’s silk in the web of personal and professional connections that bind together any creative community.”
Portland Mercury
Composer Katherine Balch Brings Coziness and Science to the Symphony
“…The piece is also inspired by the natural world, with the various instruments in the orchestra tossing up little bits of chattering sound, like the off-kilter dyad that the woodwinds trade back and forth, or the swishing and clatter happening in the string section, as if listening to birds and bugs having a conversation. Depending upon your state of mind, it can be soothing and quaint or a little unsettling. Those qualities mark much of Balch’s best work.”
— Robert Ham
VAN Magazine
Xylem: An Introduction to Katherine Balch
“New York-based composer Katherine Balch has an extraordinary number of things going on in her head at any given time.”
— Brendan Howe
Sonograma Magazine
Contemplation to Transcendence in the Polytextual Music of Kati Agócs (issue 42, April 2019)
“This paper will focus on Agócs approach to text setting when juxtaposing Borbély’s mostly secular texts with sacred texts, with emphasis on the motivic development and impact of the Borbély settings on other musical materials throughout the piece…traversing these temporally and linguistically varied texts is an overall trajectory of inward, personal reflection to outward, communal expression.”
icareifyoulisten
5 Questions to Katherine Balch
“I asked Katherine five questions about her experiences with mentorship, composers who inspire her, and the many projects that lie ahead.”
— Lauren Ishida