Former PCM student and current PCM faculty member Katelyn Vahala ‘14 is a passionate soloist, chamber musician, educator, and arts advocate in Los Angeles. She is the Artistic Director and Co-founder of Insert Music Here, a traveling outdoor concert series designed to bring awareness to our environment through music, and recently curated a Piano Spheres performance called Dreamscapes, that follows this theme. Read on to hear about her variety of music experiences, and how her love of nature shows up in her music.

This interview was conducted on 7/4/2024 and has been edited for length and clarity.

You have a variety of experience performing in prestigious concert venues and collaborating with many talented musicians. What are some highlights from these events – is there an event that’s been particularly memorable?
The highlight of any performance for me are the friendships formed and deepened through sharing music, whether on or off stage. A particularly memorable experience was my time performing with the Callisto Trio (violinist, Geneva Lewis; cellist, Annie Jacobs-Perkins) on a tour through Holland and Slovakia. We performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, which is one of the most beautiful venues I have visited. The performance was extra special as many of our family members were able to make the trip to see us perform. It was also very fun to share the music on our program (which included Café Music by Paul Schoenfield and the Piano Trio by Charles Ives) with audiences who often had never heard this American music before.

How have these experiences shaped you as a musician and as a teacher?
The more I learn and perform, the more I realize that I will forever be a student of music. Learning how to think curiously (especially if inspiration feels difficult and the practice bench doesn’t sound like the comfiest spot on a beautiful day) has been so important to learn. Curiosity inevitably makes time go by faster and leads to deeper understanding and enjoyment. For my own students, I want to pass on this ever-growing curiosity for the vast amount of music out there. My job is to give them the tools to develop their technique, artistry, and critical thinking so that they can continue to feed this curiosity throughout all aspects of their lives.

Can you talk about your experience as Artistic Director and Co-founder of Insert Music Here? What was your motivation for starting this?
I co-founded Insert Music Here in 2021 with my partner Sam Kinsey. The inspiration came from our shared history as pianists and deep appreciation for the outdoors from backpacking trips over the years. Sam and I met while completing our undergraduate degrees at USC in 2017. Since then, we have traveled and supported each other through many adventures, from backpacking the Sierra and the Grand Canyon, enduring the first years of COVID lockdown together, and creating Insert Music Here. Our dream was to find a way to combine and spread our passions for music and nature in a unique way. Sam and I believe in music’s power to emotionally communicate important issues, such as climate change, and that by listening and creating music in natural spaces, we could forge deeper care for our environment amongst audiences.

Our plan was to design and convert a van to a house to transport a piano, build and design a mobile stage, and partner with different locations across California to present outdoor piano concerts inspired by nature. We found a way to make this idea a reality and presented our first in-person, outdoor events in 2022. This started with concerts at private residences in Pasadena and grew to include a series of performances at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center, a concert in the San Gabriel Mountains at the Mountain High resort, two jam-packed days at the LA Times Festival of Books, music videos for YouTube, and outreach events at the USC Village. The programs we presented included a solo piano program, “Bach to Nature”, performed by myself, featuring a combination of music by J.S. Bach interspersed with music directly inspired by nature, and a cello and piano program, titled “Silent Wood, Deep River” with myself and cellist Annie Jacobs-Perkins. “Silent Wood, Deep River” also marked our first time commissioning music by composers to directly speak to climate change. Through grant funding from the Pro Musics Foundation, we commissioned two new works for cello and piano by composers Daniel Temkin and Stratis Minakakis. After spending some time working on other projects, we are looking forward to returning to Insert Music Here with fresh perspectives and exploring new directions this coming year.

Can you talk about your recent Piano Spheres performance? What’s the inspiration behind the Dreamscapes theme and how did you conceptualize it?
I was thrilled to be invited as an Emerging Artist at Piano Spheres for their 2023-24 season. As a high-school student with Dr. Susan Svrček, a founding member of Piano Spheres, I had the rather unique opportunity of attending and sometimes page-turning for Piano Spheres performances as a young pianist. These concerts were incredibly memorable and exciting, and even if I felt like I couldn’t quite grasp many of the ideas at the time, I remember being captivated by new sounds and extended techniques. Getting to put together my own program for this series was incredibly meaningful.

As with Insert Music Here, I took inspiration from backpacking and nature when putting together my program, titled Dreamscapes, the landscapes I dream about visiting and returning to. Several works acted as anchors for this idea – first, I chose John Corigliano’s “Winging It”, which has an improvisatory theme, to represent the “always-true fact” that there is always an element of surprise when traveling. I was also thrilled to give the West Coast premiere, with cellist Jeffrey Ho, of Daniel Temkin’s “Rise”, one of the commissioned pieces from Insert Music Here’s “Silent Wood, Deep River” program. “Rise” was inspired by Temkin’s time spent hiking in California’s mountain forests, and amongst its Redwood and Sequoia trees; locations that are also some of my favorite places to backpack. Juhi Bansal’s Travels and Gilian Whitehead’s Arapatiki were two other works that connected specifically to locations important to me; the National Parks and New Zealand, respectively.

Another truly amazing part of the Emerging Artist position at Piano Spheres is having funding to commission a new work for your program. For Dreamscapes, I commissioned composer Corey Dundee, a fellow USC grad, to compose a solo piano work inspired by nature. The end product, “Postcard from the Imaginal Sandbox”, drew inspiration from both imaginal cells, which constitute the transitional stage inside a chrysalis as a caterpillar undergoes its transformation into a butterfly, and the “imaginal workspace”, which is closely related to the “mind’s eye”. The mind’s eye can conjure all sorts of fantastical, imaginary ephemera, but the imaginal workspace is engaged specifically when one uses mental visualization as a tool while working to actualize the imaged content. It was an honor to premiere this piece and to see it take shape. Working with everyone on the Piano Spheres team, as well as rehearsing and working through Rise and Postcard from the Imaginal Sandbox with the composers, has been one of the most meaningful experiences I have had as a musician.

You’re currently pursuing your DMA in piano performance – what has that process been like?
I am happy to say that I completed my DMA coursework and graduated this past Spring. My favorite aspect of the DMA program at USC Thornton is the ability to choose multiple areas of focus. In addition to your main studies, in my case Piano Performance, each candidate chooses an Academic Field and two Elective Fields in which to complete larger projects over the course of their degree work. For my three fields, Musicology, Arts Leadership, and Music Teaching & Learning, I was able to explore topics and projects that are especially important to me and I look forward to further researching and building upon them post-graduation.

Anything else you would like to add?
I am very excited that this coming Fall, in addition to my teaching at PCM, I will continue my time at the Thornton School of Music by joining the faculty as an Adjunct Instructor teaching Keyboard Literature. I am looking forward to continuing to explore and share the vast keyboard repertoire in this new role.