Composer

Join fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center for a special mini-concert before the main event to whet your musical appetite.

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Prelude Concert

Tanglewood Music Center

Join us for the grand finale of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra's 24/25 Season, a concert that promises to be an unforgettable evening of music and emotion. Under the baton of Music Director Earl Lee, this season-concluding concert will take place on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at 8 PM in the prestigious Hill Auditorium. 

The evening will commence with a pre-concert talk at 7 PM, offering insights and enriching the concert experience. The program features the premiere of Katherine Balch’s "musica pyralis," a co-commission in partnership with the New York Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and the Erie Symphony, supported by New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program. This piece is set to captivate the audience with its innovative composition and execution.

The highlight of the night will be Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, with its famous Adagietto, a love song to Mahler’s wife, Alma. This symphony is a journey through triumph and despair, showcasing Mahler’s shift to pure instrumental music and the contrapuntal intensity reminiscent of J.S. Bach. 

Seats for this monumental event are available now as part of a subscription, with single ticket booking opening on July 18, 2024. Don't miss the opportunity to experience the culmination of the 24/25 Season with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, led by the talented Earl Lee. This concert is not just a performance but a celebration of music's power to express the inexpressible.

24/25 Season Finale

University of Michigan

Inspired by a lifelong passion for the sea, Debussy's La Mer shimmers with orchestral colors in musical portraits of tranquil waves, brewing storms, and the sun's celestial journey across a radiant sky. And soloist Paul Huang brings his "stylish and polished playing" (Strad) to Korngold's Violin Concerto, which marries European romanticism with the gilded glamour of Hollywood film scores.

Impressions of the Sea

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Winner of the 2020 Rome Prize at the American Academy, Katherine Balch is a composer of uncannily expressive and technical prowess whose work has been heard from London to Tokyo to Los Angeles and beyond.

Open Music with Katherine Balch

Alberta Rose Theatre of Portland

Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect is an evolving group of exceptional young professional musicians, called “the new face of classical music for New York” by The New York Times. With virtuosity, versatility, and an irrepressible sense of adventure, they perform a vast repertoire that ranges from historic essentials to lesser-known pieces and brand-new commissions.

Ensemble Connect

Carnegie Hall

Immerse yourself in the profound musical journey of "Beethoven & Copland" presented by the Santa Rosa Symphony, under the baton of Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong. This classical series event, set against the backdrop of the prestigious Weill Hall at the Green Music Center, promises an unforgettable experience across three performances: October 19, 20, and 21, 2024.

The concert features an exquisite lineup, starting with Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," a powerful tribute to the resilience and strength of ordinary people. Following this, the stage welcomes Sonoma County native David McCarroll, Concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, to perform Beethoven’s only violin concerto, the "Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 61." This piece is renowned for its emotional depth and technical brilliance. The program also includes the West Coast Premiere of Katherine Balch's "musica pyralis" and culminates with Copland's "Lincoln Portrait for Narrator and Orchestra," narrated by Kai Ryssdal, host of public radio’s Marketplace. This piece reflects on the enduring legacy of Abraham Lincoln, adding a narrative richness to the evening.

Concert dates and times are as follows:
- Saturday, October 19, 2024, at 7:30 pm
- Sunday, October 20, 2024, at 3:00 pm
- Monday, October 21, 2024, at 7:30 pm

Additionally, a Discovery Rehearsal is scheduled for Saturday, October 19, 2024, at 2:00 pm, offering a unique glimpse into the preparation process. Concert Conversations, free to Classical Series concert ticket holders, will take place 30 minutes before each performance, providing insightful context to enhance your concert experience.

Season subscriptions are currently available, with single tickets going on sale on July 29, 2024. Special offers include complimentary youth tickets for ages 7-17 with every paid adult for Classical Series concerts, and $10 student rush tickets for college students with valid ID.

This event is generously supported by the Anderman Family Foundation, with additional sponsorships honoring the contributions of Marcia Wagner, David & Corinne Byrd, Stephen & Lynn Olsen, and Sig Anderman, among others.

Prepare for an evening of stirring music that celebrates the human spirit, the genius of Beethoven and Copland, and the rich cultural tapestry of our community. Join us at the Green Music Center for a performance that promises to resonate long after the final note.

Beethoven & Copland

Green Music Center

New Music Ensemble

The University of Texas at Austin

Beatrice Rana returns as soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, full of memorable melodies. Renowned conductor Manfred Honeck also leads Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a favorite of audiences for its emotional charge and triumphal journey. The program opens with a New York Premiere by Katherine Balch, whom the San Francisco Chronicle has dubbed “some kind of musical Thomas Edison.”

Beatrice Rana Plays Rachmaninoff

Lincoln Center

“My new symphony must be such as to make a stir in the world.” These prophetic words from Dvořák were answered with a work considered to be one of the composer’s best. Written in the gray area of hoping for peace while also yearning for patriotic reform, Dvořák expressed this inner struggle in his epic symphony.

Bohemian Spirit: Manfred Conducts Dvořák

Heinz Hall

London Sinfonietta travels to the future with three UK premieres and a favourite past commission. Sky Macklay’s Microvariations will lull you into a false sense of tonality before whisking you on a whistle-stop, microtonal tour of 19th Century European orchestras, “a fast-forward and transcontinental sonic truncation and fantasy on” the journey of British conductor George Thomas Smart and his tuning fork in 1825. In George Lewis’ lively Tales of the Traveller, the eponymous hero travels the limits of imagination: the piece allows a soloist total free reign to improvise against a notated ensemble part. After the interval, Katherine Balch’s “serenade to lost or wasted time” plays a soprano soloist against four hand-held cassette tape recorders to distort and fragment our memory of the piece even as it is played, while the programme is rounded off by Michel van der Aa’s latest commission for the ensemble, Shades of Red, which illustrates the different perceived properties of the colour red, alongside a soundtrack which confronts the players with their own warped and distorted soundworld.

New Traditions

Southbank Centre

With over 100 to his name, it's little wonder that Haydn is known as the ‘Father of the Symphony'. With names like ‘Miracle’, ‘Surprise’ and ‘Drumroll’, his campaign storms to a century with this symphony, the ‘Military’. Here the symphony becomes a battlefield with sound effects to match. If Haydn injected the symphony with life, then Mozart strapped a rocket to its back. His ‘Jupiter’ Symphony was unparalleled in its invention and beauty giving us some of the ripest music of its age. Katherine Balch has been described as ‘some kind of musical Thomas Edison’ and her whisper concerto captures extraordinary sounds. This music was written especially for cellist Zlatomir Fung who joins the BBC Philharmonic for this UK premiere.

Sound and Fury

The Bridgewater Hall

“There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse,” wrote Stravinsky in one of his sketchbooks for The Rite of Spring. This quote sums up the program for this weekend. From the World Premiere by Katherine Balch, who captures the magic of everyday sounds to the dazzling orchestration and rhythmic creativity on display in Polovtsian Dances, to Stravinsky’s groundbreaking Rite of Spring, arguably one of the most influential pieces of music of the 20th century, rhythm, pulse, experimentation and excitement play a critical role in all three pieces.

Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances showcases the composer’s interest in opera and folk stories. A chemist by occupation, Borodin viewed composition as a pastime, distracting him from his principal profession and this work was no exception. Based on the 12th century poem, “The Epic of Igor’s Army,” Polovtsian Dances tells the story of a heroic 12th-century Russian prince as he defends against invading nomadic tribes. Enjoy it’s rhythmic creativity and dazzling orchestration.

The Rite of Spring

Meyerson Symphony Center

A top-prize winning piano trio, Trio Eris is New England Conservatory's professional trio-in-residence and makes its New York debut with a program of Katherine Balch, Fanny Mendelssohn, and Franz Schubert.

Schneider Concerts Presents | Trio Eris - New York Debut

The New School

A performance of new music for small ensembles by composition faculty members David Lang and Katherine Balch, and students.

NMNH - Katherine Balch & David Lang

Yale University

Experience the cutting edge of American music with a concert of works composed within the last five years. This is a bold orchestral exploration of contemporary creativity. Greenville Symphony’s Principal Cellist Seth Russell takes center stage in Lembit Beecher’s evocative Tell Me Again. The program also features Clarice Assad’s playful Circus Fantasia, Katherine Balch’s ethereal music for young water that danced beneath my feet, and a world premiere by Ivan Enrique Rodriguez. Witness the dynamic voices shaping today’s American music!

Composer

Katherine Balch

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 7, 2025

Schneider Concerts Presents | Trio Eris - New York Debut · The New School College of Performing Arts

Mar 5, 2026

NMNH - Katherine Balch & David Lang · Yale School of Music

28 - 29 Mar, 2026

The Last Five Years: American Music Now · Greenville Symphony

Past events

Jul 5, 2025

Prelude Concert · Tanglewood

May 17, 2025

24/25 Season Finale · Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

About

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