Songs and interludes 

Katherine Balch

In her essay A room of one’s own, Virgina Woolf considers the circumstances under which a woman’s capacity to self-express have been historically suppressed. I am attracted to this essay for a lot of reasons, but mainly for its elegance oflanguage and storytelling. She somehow makes a no-nonsense, straightforward argument burst with poetry and attentionto detail. Commissioned by Lorelei and Manchester Collective to write a piece in response to, or to exist beside, Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, I set about reflecting on Woolf’s words, filtering them out bit by bit until distilled collection of textual building blocks emerged, resulting in a page with only a word or two visible on each page. It bears a resemblance in my mind to the black triptychs that hang in Rothko’s Chapel — mostly monochromatic, with textural ripples.

“I’d like to think that there is an essence of the meaning of Woolf’s words contained in my filtering process, but now there is space for music to breathe between and give new life to the words. My piece for Lorelei sets six of these black-out texts, one for each chapter in Woolf’s essay. I wonder how Woolf, who died of suicide just shy of 30 years prior to Rothko’s own self-inflicted death, would have felt sitting in Rothko’s Chapel, or hearing Feldman’s response. Would she have wondered about the resources and support that helped to ferry these canonic works into the world? Would Rothko’s Chapel be the room of one’s own, the sanctuary of creative reflection she advocated for, or a reminder of the exclusiveness of time and space to think to certain societal echelons? Would their shared struggle with depression be a source of connection or estrangement? I perceive both as artists who endeavored to carve out vast spaces (with language, with color) where impossible things could become possible. Would they feel a resonance between their works as I do? I don’t endeavor to answer these questions in my piece for Lorelei, but to let them gently shape my musical response.” - Katherine Balch

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

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, textural lyricism, and natural processes. A collector of aural delights, found sounds are often at the heart of her work, which ranges from acoustic to mixed media and installation.

Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Talea, and the symphony orchestras of Tokyo, Darmstadt, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, Pittsburg, and Dallas. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in Europe, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. 

Katherine is the recipient of the 2020/21 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, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.

Katherine is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music. She holds a DMA from Columbia University and has served on the faculties of the Peabody Institute, The New School, and Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, building wind chimes, or taking cat naps with her feline sidekick, Zarathustra.