{{Short description|American composer (born 1991)}} {{Use American English|date=June 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Infobox biography | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1991}} | birth_place = San Diego, California, U.S. | occupation = Composer | employer = {{ublist| * Peabody Institute * Yale School of Music }} | awards = {{ublist| * Guggenheim Fellowship (2025) * Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in Large-Scale Composition (2025) }} | alma_mater = {{ublist| * Tufts University * New England Conservatory of Music * Yale School of Music * Columbia University }} | website = {{URL|katherinebalch.com}} | module = {{Infobox academic | embed = yes | thesis_title = Liminal Spaces: Sonic Ecologies within and around the Music of Erin Gee | thesis_year = 2022 | doctoral_advisor = George E. Lewis }} | module2 = {{Infobox musical artist | embed = yes | genre = Contemporary classical music }} }} '''Katherine Elise Balch'''<ref name="columbia" /> (born 1991) is an American composer. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and winner of a 2025 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award.
==Early life== Balch was born and raised in San Diego.<ref>{{cite news|id={{ProQuest|3065044117}}|title=New York chronicle|last=Nordlinger|first=Jay|work= The New Criterion|volume= 42|issue= 10|date=2024|page=147-161}}</ref><ref name="Rowe 2017"/> She obtained her bachelor's degree from Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music and her master's degree from Yale School of Music.<ref name="yale" /> In 2022, she obtained her doctorate of musical arts from Columbia University; her doctoral dissertation ''Liminal Spaces: Sonic Ecologies within and around the Music of Erin Gee'' was supervised by George E. Lewis.<ref name="columbia">{{Cite web |title=Dr. Katherine Elise Balch defends dissertation |url=https://music.columbia.edu/news/dr-katherine-elise-balch-defends-dissertation |access-date=June 11, 2025 |website=music.columbia.edu |archive-date=April 25, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240425105223/https://music.columbia.edu/news/dr-katherine-elise-balch-defends-dissertation |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="yale" />
==Musical career== She was the 2014-2015 Collage New Music Fellow,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Past Collage Fellows |url=http://www.collagenewmusic.org/past-collage-fellows |access-date=June 11, 2025 |website=Collage New Music |date=June 20, 2019 }}</ref> and she won an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 1, 2014 |title=2014 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Announced |url=https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/2014-ascap-morton-gould-young-composer-awards-announced/,%20https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/2014-ascap-morton-gould-young-composer-awards-announced/ |access-date=June 11, 2025 |website=New Music USA}}</ref> She was the California Symphony Young American Composer-in-Residence from 2017 to 2020 (the first woman to hold the position),<ref>{{Cite news |date=April 16, 2018 |title=Composer-in-Residence Katherine Balch on Cuckoo Clocks, California, and Composing in Color |url=https://www.californiasymphony.org/blog/composer-in-residence-katherine-balch-on-cuckoo-clocks-california-and-composing-in-color/ |access-date=June 11, 2025 |work=California Symphony |archive-date=April 15, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240415211041/https://www.californiasymphony.org/blog/composer-in-residence-katherine-balch-on-cuckoo-clocks-california-and-composing-in-color/ |url-status=live }}</ref> as well as Young Concert Artists' William B. Butz Composition Chair from 2017 to 2019.<ref name="yale" />
By 2017, Balch had worked as a composer with classical music ensembles including the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the FLUX Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.<ref name="Rowe 2017">{{cite news|id={{ProQuest|1878188279}}|title=BALCH CHOSEN CAL SYMPH COMPOSER|last=Rowe|first= Georgia|work= The Mercury News|date=March 16, 2017|page=T24}}</ref> In May 2019, she debuted her concerto ''Artifacts'' at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California; ''San Francisco Chronicle'' music critic Joshua Kosman said of the concerto that "she's like some kind of musical Thomas Edison—you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kosman |first=Joshua |date=May 6, 2019 |title=Review: Katherine Balch doesn't think a concerto is just for the soloist |url=https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/review-katherine-balch-doesnt-think-a-concerto-is-just-for-the-soloist |access-date=June 9, 2025 |work=San Francisco Chronicle}}</ref>
Balch won the American Academy in Rome's 2020 Elliott Carter Rome Prize.<ref>{{Cite news |date=July 22, 2020 |title=New Rome Prize Winners and Italian Fellows |url=https://aarome.org/news/features/new-rome-prize-winners-italian-fellows |access-date=June 10, 2025 |work=American Academy in Rome}}</ref> She composed "Apartment Sounds" for Yvonne Lam's 2023 album ''Watch Over Us''; ''American Record Guide'' called Balch "welcome purveyor of timbral variety in ''Apartment Sounds'', as the recorded materials included in this short piece are relatively refreshing.<ref>{{Cite magazine |year=2023 |title=The Newest Music |magazine=American Record Guide |page=171-174 |volume=86 |issue=6 |id={{ProQuest|2881922883}}}}</ref>
Her piece ''Forgetting'' was performed at the Song Company's March 2024 Superbloom production at the Sydney Opera House; Peter McCallum of ''WAtoday'' said it "began with stopped utterances and sounds in a state of almost silent inarticulateness and hesitancy".<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Shand |first1=John |last2=Ruffles |first2=Michael |date=March 7, 2024 |title=The Human League put on a classic retro show – but it's all about that one song |work=WAtoday |id={{ProQuest|3063781667}}}}</ref> Manfred Honeck conducted her piece ''musica pyralis'' at the New York Philharmonic in April 2024; a ''New York Times'' review called the piece "a study in shifting atmospheres, wispy, mysterious and fleeting".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zahr |first=Oussama |date=April 14, 2024 |title=Review: Under Manfred Honeck, the Philharmonic Becomes One: Critic's Pick |work=New York Times |id={{ProQuest|3038097583}}}}</ref> Balch's commissioned piece for the Manchester Collective involved the use of text from Virginia Woolf's essay ''A Room of One's Own'', and a review in ''The Guardian'' stated that Balch "found a connection between Rothko and Feldman and her own music in Virginia Woolf".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Clements |first=Andrew |date=May 6, 2024 |title=Sansara/Manchester Collective review – an exquisitely colourful tribute to Rothko Chapel |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/may/06/sansara-manchester-collective-review-rothko-chapel-morton-feldman |access-date=June 10, 2025 |work=The Guardian |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>
In 2025, Balch won the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in Large-Scale Composition for her work ''whisper concerto''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Large-Scale Composition |url=https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/awards/rps_music_awards/latest-winners/large-scale-composition |access-date=June 9, 2025 |website=Royal Philharmonic Society}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Morley |first=Christopher |date=March 13, 2025 |title=Conductor Yamada honoured as awards leave London behind |work=Birmingham Post |page=24 |id={{ProQuest|3176455657}}}}</ref> The same year, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition.<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 15, 2025 |title=Announcing the 2025 Guggenheim Fellows |url=https://www.gf.org/stories/announcing-the-2025-guggenheim-fellows |access-date=June 9, 2025 |website=Guggenheim Fellowships |archive-date=April 27, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250427030631/https://www.gf.org/stories/announcing-the-2025-guggenheim-fellows |url-status=live }}</ref>
Balch worked as an adjunct professor at Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University during the 2021-2022 academic year.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bulletin 2021-2022 |url=https://bulletins.iu.edu/iub/music/2021-2022/faculty/composition.shtml |access-date=June 9, 2025 |website=Jacobs School of Music}}</ref> In 2022, she taught composition as part of the faculty of the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.<ref>{{Cite news |date=July 28, 2021 |title=Katherine Balch Joins Composition Faculty for Spring 2022 Semester |url=https://magazine.peabody.jhu.edu/2021/07/28/katherine-balch-joins-composition-faculty-for-spring-2022-semester/ |access-date=June 9, 2025 |work=The Peabody Post |publisher=Johns Hopkins University}}</ref> She later{{when|date=July 2025}} returned to Yale School of Music as assistant professor of composition.<ref name="yale">{{Cite web |title=Katherine Balch |url=https://music.yale.edu/people/katherine-balch |access-date=June 9, 2025 |website=Yale School of Music}}</ref> She worked previously at Mannes School of Music and The Walden School.<ref name="yale" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=PSNY: Katherine Balch Biography |url=https://www.eamdc.com/psny/composers/katherine-balch/biography/ |access-date=June 9, 2025 |website=European American Music Distributors Company}}</ref>
==Personal life== Balch lives in Bethany, Connecticut.<ref>{{Cite web |title=EAM: Katherine Balch - Country Radio |url=https://www.eamdc.com/composers/katherine-balch/works/country-radio/ |access-date=June 11, 2025 |website=European American Music Distributors Company}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}} {{authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Balch, Katherine}}
Category:1991 births Category:Living people Category:Musicians from San Diego Category:Classical musicians from California Category:Classical musicians from Connecticut Category:People from Bethany, Connecticut Category:21st-century American women composers Category:21st-century American classical composers Category:Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:New England Conservatory alumni Category:Yale School of Music alumni Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:Peabody Institute faculty Category:Yale School of Music faculty