© Bluebird Photography UK

Katherine BALCH

Biography

En cours de traduction. 
Voir la version anglaise

Work

Musica Pyrialis

For symphony orchestra
Publication : Schott
2025 SELECTION

Work nominated in 2025
for the 2027 Musical Composition Prize

Most of my music tries to filter the sights and sounds of my surrounding environment through the instruments I'm writing for, rather like a musical sieve. In musica pyralis, [Music of the Firefly], the orchestra sings the summer soundscape of my home in rural Connecticut, where, thanks to little light pollution, fireflies bashfully illuminate the nightly cacophony of frogs and crickets and many other little creatures. Nature is the best orchestrator – despite the saturated soundscape, each noise-maker can hear and be heard as they occupy distinct registral and timbral niches. I try to capture a glimpse of this miraculously transparent density in this (mostly) brisk concert opener, and set to song the gently omnipresent twinkle of the phontinus pyralis – the Common Eastern Firefly.

Katherine Balch