2018-19 Collaborators
KATHERINE BALCH
Called "intricate" and an "exquisite sound world" by icareifyoulisten, Katherine's music has been commissioned and performed by the Tokyo, Minnesota and Albany Symphony Orchestras, American Composer's Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Yale Camerata and Philharmonia, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Antico Moderno, FLUX Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, wild Up and Contemporaneous, among others, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna), and Suntory Hall (Tokyo). Upcoming projects for the 2018-2019 season include new works for NYC-based Bearthoven Trio, ICE, Oregon and California Symphony Orchestras, and the Argus Quartet / Concert Artist's Guild.
Katherine is currently Composer-in-Residence with the California Symphony, a three-year position she will hold through 2020. She is managed by Young Concert Artists Inc., where she currently holds the William B. Butz Composition Chair. Recent recognitions include fellowships from Aspen, Norfolk, Fontainebleau, Tanglewood, and Santa Fe music festivals, multiple awards from ASCAP and BMI, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Katherine received her B.A. / B.M. in the Tufts / New England Conservatory double degree program, where she studied history and political science at Tufts (summa cum laude) and composition at NEC. Her research has been published in the History of European Ideas. Explorations of political philosophy, history, and the relationship of the artist to society remain an important part of her musical identity. She completed her M.M. at Yale School of Music as a Charles H. Ditson Fellow, where she studied with Aaron Jay Kernis, Chris Theofanidis, and David Lang, and is currently pursuing her D.M.A. as a Dean's Fellow at Columbia University, studying with Georg Haas and Fred Lerdahl.
Passionate about education at all levels, she is a faculty member of the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire and formerly at Bard College-Conservatory preparatory in the Hudson Valley. When not making or listening to music, Katherine enjoys cooking, playing with her cat, Zarathustra, various combinations of espresso and steamed milk, and the outdoors.
SARAH HENNIES
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist based in Ithaca, NY. Her work utilizes an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice in a subversive examination of psychoacoustics, queer identity, and performance art. She has presented her work in a variety of contexts including Café Oto (London), cave12 (Geneva), Ende Tymes (NYC), Festival Cable (Nantes), the Johns Hopkins Digital Media Center, O’ Art Space (Milan), and Second Edition (Stockholm) and has received commissions for new work from Cristian Alvear, Bearthoven, Bent Frequency, R. Andrew Lee, LIMINAR, Qubit Music, and the Thin Edge New Music Collective. Her work has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New Music USA, New York State Council on the Arts, and in 2016 was awarded a fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Hennies is currently a member of improvised music group Meridian with Greg Stuart and Tim Feeney, a duo with sound/performance artist Jason Zeh, and the Queer Percussion Research Group with Jerry Pergolesi, Bill Solomon, and Jennifer Torrence. In late 2017 she premiered the groundbreaking work, Contralto at Issue Project Room (NYC), a film featuring a cast of transgender women with a live score for string quartet and three percussionists.
In 2013, Hennies founded the record label Weighter Recordings, releasing works by artists working at the fringes of contemporary music including Prune Bécheau, Thomas Bonvalet, Morgan Evans-Weiler, Tim Feeney, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Enrico Malatesta, and Matt Sargent.