Before UTC student Katherine Fair penned her maiden composition in college, before her fifth grade hands grasped a violin for the first time and before she clambered onto a piano bench not long after learning how to stand, her mother knew she’d love music.
“I responded powerfully to music when I was in the womb,” says Fair, a 22-year-old Maryville native.
Although Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich is Fair’s chief inspiration today – “He’s my guy,” she smiles – her parents weaned her on contemporary Christian and country music. These kinds of tunes might not get Fair kicking anymore, but they touched something innate in her – a part of her that would someday express itself through creations of sound, timbre and rhythm.
However, before the composer in Fair emerged, she uncovered the presence of another force within her.
At the age of 19, Fair says she suffered a two-month manic episode that was unlike anything she’d experienced. Because the event was both unprecedented and unexpected, she didn’t realize anything was wrong.
The people close to her knew.
“I tore my life apart in a lot of ways and said and did hateful things that weren’t a part of my personality until then,” Fair recalls.
With the help of her family, Fair emerged from this interlude with a bipolar disorder diagnosis and medication that tempers the effects of her mental illness, a serious condition that can trigger shifts in mood that range from extreme highs (the manic episode Fair described) to severe lows (depressive episodes).
Fair’s bipolar diagnosis preceded a seismic shift in her trajectory as a musician.
Although she’d excelled at piano at an early age, the violin became her instrument of choice – if not her passion – as she grew older and began to envision the shape her career would take.
“At the beginning of college, I thought I’d be sitting in the second violins for the rest of my life. I was going to be a mediocre violinist and teach. I didn’t want to be a star, but I wanted to make a living in music.”
A back injury that occurred when Fair was young was causing worsening pain whenever she’d play, making the career she’d envisioned virtually impossible. However, instead of being dissuaded, Fair clung to the vapors of her dream.
“My back injury made it clear – I couldn’t not do music. So, I found myself repeating, ‘I’m smart and capable – just not on violin – and I need to discover in what way.’”
This was the moment the composer in Fair emerged and salvaged her aspirations.
“If you’d asked me five or six years ago to compose a piece of music, I would’ve said, ‘I can’t do that.’ It would’ve seemed odd and out of place, like it wasn’t who I was.”
Undeterred, the hidden part of Fair labored to make itself known, initially as an itch to modify the pieces she was performing as a student musician and then as a dawning realization that she contained the power of invention.
“I was arranging Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Oblivion’ for string quartet when I realized I was creating music using someone else’s ideas. That made me think, ‘Maybe I could do this.’”
Fair has since left her “maybe” in the dust of her ascension to only student composer but also author of a work that’s been performed across the U.S. and in Japan.
She wrote the nomadic piece, “Microduo,” for composition class. When clarinetist Katsuya Yuasa and flutist Ayça Çetin – spouses who form the internationally renowned ensemble Duo Esplanade – heard the piece while serving as guest artists in the class, they decided to include it on the program for their 2023 tour.
Fair says the news that people outside the walls of UTC would hear her composition was a defining moment.
“I couldn’t believe it. It’s a cutesy abstract work I’d spent two weeks composing. I cried.”
“Microduo” also won second prize in the Southeastern Composer’s League Salop-Slates Undergraduate Composition Competition in 2023.
Çetin will join an alternate clarinetist in a performance of the award-winning “Microduo” Saturday, April 6, as Fair presents a 45-minute program of her pieces for winds, strings and percussion beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Cadek Recital Hall (725 Oak Street). The program will be free and open to the public, which will allow Fair to introduce her music to fresh ears.
The program will also feature a work based on Fair’s love for the Appalachian Mountains titled “Juniper.” She began writing the piece last summer while working as the head counselor at the Eastern Music Festival, which is hosted on the lush Guilford College campus in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“Juniper became a proper piece as I basked in the similarities between the campus and my grandparent’s Louisiana home,” read the notes Fair has prepared for the April 6 program. “I spent a large portion of my free time in my hammock under a clump of trees outside the counselor’s office, and as I was seeking out delinquent students late at night, the forest seemed bigger, wiser and shrouded with more mystery than ever before. I found the yawning maw of greenery an incredibly enticing concept, and I wanted to capture those emotions in the traditional string quartet medium.”
Fair found musical inspiration in Shostakovich while writing “Juniper,” which her composition professor at UTC, Jonathan McNair, calls “a work of serious intent, good melody and harmony, and variety.”
While colleagues and friends of Fair will perform most of the April 6 program, she intends to take the stage to perform the violin portion of her folk medley for stings and percussion, “Yellow,” a piece inspired by the Yellow Deli restaurant on McCallie Avenue and its subtle influences on the UTC campus.
The April 6 program will also feature multiple selections that muse on Fair’s identity as a bipolar individual and how her mental health impacts her art.
“Off Kilter” is a 2021 abstract work for solo saxophone Fair says captures the angular happiness of a typical manic thought process.
“Mania is quite useful in the creative process in small doses,” she says. “This piece is grounded in tonality, but it’s also one of my first pieces to flow with rhythmic freedom.”
Fair will also present “Humbled/Annoyed,” which chronicles a violin setback she experienced in March that left her feeling – as the title insists – simultaneously humbled and annoyed.
“I failed an essential violin exam; my bow shook constantly and I never recovered,” she explains in her notes for the April 6 program. “I spent the weekend after this exam feeling frustrated with myself and questioning my abilities.”
Fair completed “Humbled/Annoyed” in one week and then aced a redo of her exam later in March. When she spoke with her friends about its title, many of them had a visceral reaction to the marriage of the words “humbled” and “annoyed.”
“It’s an incredibly relatable emotion, and the frustration of knowing you can do better has spurred many artists throughout history,” Fair adds.
A performance of Fair’s “Anecdotes” for chamber ensemble – which owes its existence to a class assignment – will complete the program.
Fair says she hopes her musical essays on the altered states she experiences will resonate with her audience.
“I feel like a more elevated artist because of my bipolar diagnosis. I used to think of it as a hindrance, but my fiancé said it keeps my emotions close to the surface, which can be either a good or bad thing.
“Keeping my emotions close to the surface allows me to easily engage them and makes creating art that resounds with people much easier. People find my music relatable, and I think me being bipolar has a lot to do with that.”
The development of Fair’s April 6 program has been an education in other essential skills, including creating an order of music, developing a stage and crew plan and promoting a performance. Her various professors have guided her through this excursion and earned her gratitude with each step, she says.
“I’m very thankful for the UTC music program. This is a band-focused school, but there are opportunities in chamber music here, and I appreciate having those.”
McNair, a frequently performed and recorded composer and the Ruth S. Holmberg professor of American Music at UTC, says Fair has worked relentlessly to reach this point as a student and has a bright future as a composer if she seizes it.
“Katherine has a sincere interest in and enthusiasm for music, and had more knowledge of music than many other students have upon entering the university. Since then, she’s grown a great deal as a composer. Based on this and her increase in maturity, I believe she has the potential to accomplish good things as a composer in the real world.”
Fair’s April 6 program will mark another important moment for UTC: It will serve as the first student recital since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m looking to throw down the gauntlet to the other composition students,” she says, her smile returning. “It’s time for us to make magic.”
Fair’s mother has always known she would.