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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‹), composer Katherine Balch is interested in the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes. A collector of aural delights, field recordings are often at the heart of her work, which ranges from acoustic to mixed media and installation.
Katherine Balch’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the symphony orchestras of Tokyo, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Dallas. She has been featured at IRCAM’s ManiFeste, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Festival MANCA in Europe, Suntory Summer Arts and the Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States.
Katherine Balch is the recipient of the 2020-2021 Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellowship. She was the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony and held the 2017-2019 William B. Butz Composition Chair at Young Concert Artists, Inc. Other recognitions include awards and grants from Wigmore Hall, ASCAP, BMI, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.
Since Spring 2022, Katherine Balch serves as a visiting professor of composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. Currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, she counts George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas and Marcos Balter among her mentors there. She received her M.M. from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with David Lang, Aaron Kernis and Chris Theofanidis.

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