Solitude and Suffrage

The music of Katherine Balch (b. 1991) captures the magic of everyday sounds, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination, discovery, and a rich diversity of styles. Ms. Balch is often inspired by literature, nature, and science, aptly reflected in the San Francisco Chronicle’s description of her as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas.” 

Ms. Balch’s facility in elevating ordinary sounds through large-scale orchestration and dramatic narrative arcs has led to commissions and performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the symphony orchestras of Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Fontainebleau Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in France, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. Her work has been championed by the Argus Quartet and Departure Duo and has been presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. 

Ms. Balch recently completed her tenure as the first female composer-in-residence for the California Symphony, where she drew the attention of the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She has also served as composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, who commissioned her to write works for the Kennedy Center and Merkin Hall debuts of flutist Anthony Trionfo, pianist Albert Cano Smit, and cellist Zlatomir Fung. 

Nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn, Ms. Balch was just announced as the recipient of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award. She has also been honored by ASCAP, BMI, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the International Society of Contemporary Music. In 2021, she will be in residence at the American Academy in Rome, completing an album of music for double bass and ensemble as the Elliot Carter Rome Prize Fellow. 

Ms. Balch is deeply committed to developing inclusive, engaging pedagogical practices that empower students through creative music-making, and she maintains an active teaching studio at Mannes School of Music. Currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, she counts George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Marcos Balter among her mentors. She is a proud alumna of the Yale School of Music, where she studied with David Lang, Christopher Theofanidis, and Aaron J. Kernis. Her chamber works are published by Schott PSNY. Ms. Balch documents her lived experiences on the page, with each composition serving as a diary of what has captivated her curiosity. Fueled by her peers’ creative practices, she has been

using her time in quarantine to pick up fiddling and learn more about American improvisational traditions. When she’s not creating, she’s actively collecting inspiration from the nearest botanical gardens, Rimbaud’s poetry, or her feline sidekick, Zarathustra. 

An iaspis is a type of sparkling quartz. Written for solo violin, scordatura.

Ulysses Kay, born on January 7, 1917, in Tucson, Arizona, began his education in the public school system of Tucson. He attended the University of Arizona where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1938 and subsequently entered the Eastman School of Music as a student of Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. He was also a student of Paul Hindemith at the Berkshire Music Center and at Yale University. Following a three year tour with the United States Navy, Kay received an Alice M. Ditson Fellowship for work at Columbia University. Also he has been a recipient of a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, Rome Prizes for residence at the American Academy inRome for the seasons of 1949-50 and 1951-52, a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy for 1950-51, and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In addition to these accolades, Kay has won several awards for his music, including first prize from Broadcast Music, Inc. for his Suite for Orchestra, a Gershwin Memorial Prize for A Short Overture, and an American Broadcasting Company Prize for the overture, Of New Horizons. He also won the third annual George Gershwin Memorial Contest for "A Short Overture," and an award from the American Composers Alliance for his "Suite for Orchestra." In 1958 Kay was a member of the first delegation of American composers to visit the Soviet Union in the Cultural Exchange Program sponsored by the United States State Department.

Kay worked for Broadcast Music, Inc., a performing arts organization, from 1953 to 1968. In 1968 he was appointed distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. After two decades teaching there, he retired. As a composer Kay was known primarily for his symphonic and choral compositions. He also wrote five operas.  A resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, Ulysses Kay died at the age of 78 on May 20, 1995.

Fugitive songs, W40, for medium voice & piano (1950). New York: Pembroke Music. 1. Song is old [text: Herman Hagedorn]; 2. That day you came [text: Lizette Reese]; 3. When the wind is low [text: Carl Young Rice]; 4. Even song [text: Frederic Ridgeley Torrence]; 5. The fugitives [text: Florence Wilkerson]; 6. The mystic [text: Wittner Bynner]; 7. Sentence [text: Witner Bynner]. 8. When I am dead [text: Elsa Baxter]. Première: 1957/IX/28; New York, Town Hall; Eugene Brice, baritone; Jonathan Brice, piano.

Praised as “strikingly original” (NY Times) and “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (LA Times), Kamala Sankaram (b. 1978) writes highly theatrical music that defies categorization. Recent commissions include the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Opera on Tap, among others. Awards, grants and residencies include: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Known for her work with emerging technologies, her recent genre-defying hit Looking at You (with collaborators Rob Handel and Kristin Marting) featured live data mining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers. Sankaram, Handel, and Marting also created ‘all decisions will be made by consensus’, a short absurdist opera performed live over Zoom and featured on NBC and the BBC3. With librettist Jerre Dye and Opera on Tap, she created The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera (Samsung VR, Jaunt VR, Kennedy Center Reach Festival, “Best Virtual Reality Video” NY Independent Film Festival, Future of Storytelling, Salem Horror Festival and the Topanga Film Festival.)               

Also a performer (hailed as "an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes" (Wall Street Journal), Kamala moves freely between the worlds of experimental music, creative music, and contemporary opera. Kamala recently sang the role of Gwen St. Clair in the revival of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A frequent collaborator with Anthony Braxton, she has premiered his operas Trillium E and Trillium J, as well as appearing on his 12-hour recording GTM (Syntax) 2017. Other notable collaborations include The Wooster Group’s LA DIDONE (Kaaitheater, Brussels, Edinburgh International Festival, Rotterdam Schouberg, Grand Théâtre de la Ville, Luxembourg, St. Anne’s Warehouse, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles), the PROTOTYPE Festival’s THUMBPRINT (Baruch Performing Arts, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles), and appearances with John Zorn, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Petr Kotik, among others. Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose accolades include two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards, the 2018 Mid-Atlantic touring grant, and appearances on WFMU and NPR. Bombay Rickey’s opera-cabaret on the life of Yma Sumac premiered in the 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival and was presented in London at Tête-à-Tête Opera’s Cubitt Sessions. 

Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

Kivalina is a small Inuit village in Alaska. Located on a barrier island only 1.9 square miles across, the rising sea level threatens to submerge the village, its people, and their culture. 

The second movement is inspired by Inuit throat singing. 

Sedna is the Inuit goddess of the sea. 

Agloolik is a mythical creature who lives below the ice. 

Quinn Mason (b. 1996) is a composer and conductor based in Dallas, Texas.  Quinn has been described as “a brilliant composer just barely in his 20s who seems to make waves wherever he goes.” (Theater Jones) and "One of the most sought after young composers in the country" (Texas Monthly). His orchestral music has been performed in concert by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony Orchestra, South Bend Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Seattle, New Texas Symphony Orchestra, and the Mission Chamber Orchestra. His compositions for winds has been performed by the Cobb Wind Symphony, Metropolitan Winds, and bands of Southern Methodist University, University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, Penn State, Purdue University, Seattle Pacific University and others throughout the United States and Canada. His chamber music has been performed by the American Composers Forum,Voices of Change, loadbang, MAKE trio, Atlantic Brass Quintet, UT Arlington Saxophone Quartet, and the Cézanne, Julius and Baumer string quartets and his solo music has been championed by distinguished soloists such as David Cooper (principal horn, Chicago Symphony), Holly Mulcahy (concertmaster, Wichita Symphony) and Michael Hall (viola soloist).

​A multiple prize winner in composition, he has received numerous awards and honors from such organizations as the American Composers Forum, Voices of Change, The Diversity Initiative, Texas A&M University, the Dallas Foundation, Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the Heartland Symphony Orchestra and the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra.

​Quinn’s mission is to compose music for various mediums “Based in traditional western art music and reflecting the times in which we currently live”.  Quinn has studied with Dr. Lane Harder at the SMU Meadows School of the Arts, Dr. Winston Stone at University of Texas at Dallas and has also worked with renowned composers David Maslanka, Libby Larsen, David Dzubay and Robert X. Rodriguez.

As a conductor, Quinn has led Orchestra Seattle, the Brevard Sinfonia, and the Texas Christian University Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted world premieres of his own works as well as several world premieres written by his composer colleagues and standard orchestral repertoire. Currently, Quinn serves as Apprentice Conductor of the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. Quinn has studied conducting with Miguel Harth-Bedoya (Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra), Dr. Germán Gutiérrez (TCU), Will White (Orchestra Seattle), and Jack Delaney and Paul Phillips (SMU). He also counts Richard Giangiulio (Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra), Edwin Outwater (SFCM) and John Axelrod (Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla) as mentors.

Upcoming world premieres include his 'Symphony in C Major' with the Heartland Symphony Orchestra, Symphony No. 4 "Strange Time" by the Meadows Wind Ensemble and 'Princesa de la Luna' by the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and conductor Brett Mitchell. Upcoming guest conducting appearances include concerts with the MusicaNova Orchestra and the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. 

An avid and passionate writer, Quinn maintains his own classical music blog and contributes guest articles to other blogs, such as the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy. Quinn is a member of ASCAP and the Conductor's Guild.

‘The 19th Amendment’ was composed as a ballet for Avant Chamber Ballet and choreographer Katie Puder in 2019. Although there is no story for the ballet, the music is episodic and in several distinct sections beginning with a clarinet solo that serves a narrative purpose. This is followed by a depiction of time elapsing (with the imitation of clock), which is followed by two ‘struggle’ sections (each more intense then the last) and two calmer sections. Throughout the composition, each of the three instruments act in narrative roles, telling a part of the story and even conversing with each other. My goal with the composition was to not only depict the struggle of obtaining the right to vote, but the contemplate on the effect that passing of the 19th amendment has had on our current generation and in the words of the choreographer herself, “whether that right will last as we ponder if it will ever be taken away again”.