Called “spellbinding” (Seen and Heard International) with “glow and poise and electric tension” (The Daily Telegraph), the music of composer Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination, discovery, and textural lyricism. Inspired by the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes, she has been 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).

Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, l’Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Fontainebleau Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in France, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK, 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 presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.

Winner of the 20/21 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Katherine was nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn for 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, Civitella Ranieri, the Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.

Katherine was the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony, where she was lauded by the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She held the 2017-2019 William B. Butz Composition Chair at Young Concert Artists, Inc.

Deeply committed to pursuing inclusive, engaging pedagogical practices that empower students through creative music-making, Katherine is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition (adjunct) at Yale School of Music. She has previously served on the faculties of Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute, Mannes School of Music, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the Walden School and Bard College-Conservatory Prep. Katherine holds a D.M.A. from Columbia University and an M.M. from Yale School of Music. She counts among her mentors George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Marcos Balter, Zosha Di Castri, Aaron Kernis, Chris Theofanidis, and David Lang.

Katherine documents her lived experiences on the page, with each composition serving as a diary of what has captivated her curiosity. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, or playing with her feline sidekick, Zarathustra.

Uzbekistan-born Tatar composer Adeliia (Adele) Faizullina (b.1988) is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and Tatar Quray player. As a composer, she explores cutting-edge vocal colors and paints delicate and vibrant atmospheres inspired by the music and poetry of Tatar folklore. The Washington Post has praised her compositions as “vast and varied, encompassing memory and imagination.”
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Her recent commissions include works for Jennifer Koh, the Tesla Quartet, Johnny Gandelsman, and the Metropolis Ensemble. Her works have also been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Albany Symphony, Kronos Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Del Sol Quartet, Ashley Bathgate, Stephanie Lamprea, and Duo Cortona. She herself performed as soprano soloist with the Seattle Symphony in her own work, Tatar Folk Tales, after she won the Seattle Symphony Celebrate Asia Competition in 2019. Adeliia was one of seven composers to be selected for the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute in 2022. In the same year, she was selected for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot readings. She was a guest artist at Play On Philly in 2021. She is a current member of Composing Earth 2022-2023, by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Her music has been performed at the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas, and National Sawdust.
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In 2021, she was featured in the The Washington Post, “21 for ’21: Composers and Performers Who Sound Like Tomorrow.” In 2020, she was a finalist for the All Russia Young Composers Competition Dedicated to the 66th International Rostrum of Composers, in Moscow, Russia. From 2018 to 2020, Adeliia was a Cynthia Jackson Ford Fellowship recipient at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In 2018, she won first prize in the Radio Orpheus Young Composers Competition in Moscow, and was a finalist for International Rostrum of Composers, in Budapest.

Adeliia received her BM in Voice in Kazan, Russia, and BM in Music Composition in Gnessins Russian Academy of Music. She has an MM in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with Yevgeniy Sharlat, and in 2019 started her DMA at the University of Southern California, studying with Nina C. Young. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Music & Multimedia Composition at Brown University.

Currently Adeliia resides in Providence, RI. She also happens to be blind. She enjoys taking walks and being in nature.

Hannah Ishizaki (b. 2000) is a composer and sound artist based in New York City. Her music seeks to foster connections between musicians and the audience through the explorations of the physicality of music performance. Hannah finds inspiration in the process of composition, leading her to experiment with a wide range of instruments and sound generating methods—from acoustic instruments in an orchestra to digital sensors to rocks and zippers.

Immersed in the world of collaboration, Hannah has worked with dancers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists, to connect the seemingly unconnected and create innovative and multidisciplinary projects.
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Hannah’s work has been recognized throughout the United States and Internationally, and her compositions have been performed by renowned musicians and ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Juilliard Orchestra, the National Sawdust Ensemble, Karen Gomyo, Nathan Meltzer, Kevin Zhu, Mira Wang, Guy Johnston, Sterling Elliot, Carlos Jiménez Fernández, and Umi Garrett. Recently, Hannah was named one of five 2023 Hildegard commission winners, which is presented by National Sawdust and
generously supported by The Onassis Foundation and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. In
2017, she became the youngest woman ever to have a world premiere with the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra (PSO). In 2022, Hannah was selected as one of four winners of Juilliard’s
Orchestral Composition Competition, and her work, “Fractured Transformations” was premiered
by the Juilliard Orchestra with Maestro Jeffrey Milarsky on April 18, 2022 in Alice Tully Hall.
In the summer of 2022, Hannah is the artist-in-residence for the Stiftung für Kunst und Musik,
Dresden, writing a variety of chamber, orchestral, and vocal works based on the deconstruction
of words and meaning. During her time in Dresden, she completed a String Octet that
was premiered at the closing concert of the Moritzburg Festival. In March of 2022, she
completed a residency in the Henriquez (“The Boat”) Studio at Banff, where she researched and
conceptualized for an evening-length work for the sounds of dance.
In addition to composing, Hannah has also organized and created multidisciplinary arts
performances and organizations. Recently, she organized the Amplified Currents Festival of the
Arts Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 editions, which focused on highlighting the process of
collaboration. She has also created “See Music; Hear Art,” a collaboration between Juilliard
composers and Cooper Union visual artists to create collaborative works, which was presented in
a sold-out performance and gallery.

Hannah also is an active violinist, producer, and conductor. Hannah has studied with violinists
Areta Zhulla, Ronald Copes, and Hong-Guang Jia. At the age of 16, Hannah made her Heinz
Hall conducting debut as the winner of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra’s conducting
competition, judged by Leonard Slatkin. Previous composition teachers have included David
Ludwig and Chris Massa. Hannah studied with Andrew Norman for composition and Areta
Zhulla and Ronald Copes for violin at the Juilliard School, where she was the recipient of and
first composer to receive a Kovner Fellowship.

Cleek Schrey is a fiddler, improviser, and composer from Virginia. He plays traditional music from Appalachia and Ireland and makes experimental work using composition, film, and field recordings. His work is preoccupied with the physical phenomena of vibrating strings and the histories and aesthetics of recording technologies. He collaborates with experimental composers such as David Behrman and Alvin Lucier and the downtown improviser Shelley Hirsch. Solo appearances include the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville), SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (AUS), and the Kilkenny Arts Festival (IE). He is a 2021-2022 Jerome Foundation Artist in Residence at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn.