Catherine Lamb

Catherine Lamb (born 1982 in Olympia, Washington) is an American composer and violist, and a winner of the 2020 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize. Career Lamb describes her music as exploring “the interaction of tone, summations of shapes and shadows, phenomenological expansions, the architecture of the liminal (states in between outside/inside), and the long introduction form”. Most of her works explore extended harmonic spaces in just intonation. Lamb explained her compositional philosophy in The Wire: “I follow the philosophy that the most intense sound is not the most intensive… I don’t agree with those who believe that sounds need to be pushed in order to be physical, or that they need to be loud in order to hear difference or summation tones. Particularly when working with particular tonal colourations and shadings, the more the tones are played in a plain and relaxed manner with room to blossom, the more expressive and generative they might become.” Lamb was also the film score composer for Anhe Ghore Da Daan. She has collaborated with Éliane Radigue, Marc Sabat, and Johnny Chang; received commissions from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Dedalus, Ensemble Musi