Katherine Balch

On my commute home from work, from the city of New Haven to the rural township of Bethany, Connecticut, the classical radio station 90.1FM is a delightful avant-garde collage of adjacent channel interference. Mendelssohn is spliced with Top 40, a Scarlatti sonata accompanies biblical talk radio, static lurches between the soft shapes of a Chopin waltz. It’s totally delightful and musically perfect. I’ve tried to record it many times. When I get out of my car and a more collaborative channel adjacency takes shape: a dense spectrum of nature’s busy orchestra. Country Radio tries to capture and play musically a bit with these experiences. I think of each performance module as an adjacent channel on the one hand, and part of a sonic ecosystem on the other. Each module is derived from and plays with a  eld recording of the sounds described above.  is piece is heavily inspired by and borrows structurally from Charles Ives’ Central Park in the Dark and from his music in general.

Country Radio is written for and dedicated to Ensemble Modern, whose kindness, support, and artistry have made me a better listener and invited me to explore new musical spaces in my own work.

– Katherine Balch