VAN Magazine
essay
Me and Ruth in Berlin: a composer reflects on working through fear (August 22, 2024)
“…In sorting out the myriad unfolding of actions contained in the expression of a single musical moment, from the molecular to the societal, the musicologist Benjamin Piekut writes, “Whatever music might be, it clearly relies on many things that are not music, and therefore we should conceive of it as a set of relations among distinct materials and events that have been translated to work together.” I feel this acutely in my own practice: the artistic motivations behind any piece of work branch off into so many more reasons than “I felt x so I wrote y.” Presenting a work to an audience without presenting those “distinct materials and events” as if it were a contained entity feels incomplete, but it is the expectation composers often encounter. The fears noted in the “Country Radio” column of my “fear of failure” spreadsheet that resemble Crawford’s—fear of having nothing to say for an open instrumentation ensemble, fear of not knowing how to say it—are compounded with other considerations: fear of disappointing (any number of parties involved), fear of misreading the ensemble’s intentions, fear of wasting someone else’s time, “fear, fear a whole web of it.”
Considering the network of entangled motivations and the fears they elicit draws questions about the musical works they produce. Does the brilliance of Crawford’s String Quartet come from a creative force untethered to the extra-musical contingencies of a sustainable career in the arts? Does Ives’s lack of an awaiting ensemble free him to create a score that informally notates its complex temporal interplay? Is “Country Radio” less authentic because I never would’ve written a piece like this without such a network?...”
Musical America Worldwide
profile
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
essay series
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
profile
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
interview
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
essay
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
interview
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