Koch's composing career began with the winning of a prize from Composers Press in New York and with his receiving the Homer B. Hatch Award from the Fortnightly Musical Club. While at the Eastman School of Music, he won first prize with the Benjamin Award for an orchestral work honoring the late John F. Kennedy; later he won first prize in the American Choral Director's contest. He has been the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize in Composition given by the Women's city Club, and he has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Music Center, the Ohio Arts Council, and Meet the Composer. For two years he served as composer-in-residence for the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival and for the Cleveland Playhouse. He is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has occupied the Composers Cottage at Wolf Trap Farm Park four times. Five of his songs are on the CD "It is All Music", honoring the poetry of Barbara Angell. A cross section of his music is being brought out by the Riverside Academy of Music in honor on a CD produced by Truemedia Records Ltd. From 1988-1991 Koch served as Editor for International Music Company in New York. While in New York his music was performed in three different concerts. Jocelyn Chang, harpist, recently played a work of his on a European tour with her Dilling Harp.
As pianist, Koch has performed his Concertino for Piano and Orchestra with the National Gallery Orchestra in Washington, D.C. He has also played for many singers, instrumentalists and string quartets. Baritone Andrew While and Koch gave a Weill Recital Hall concert at Carnegie Hall on March 27, 1995, in which twenty-eight of Koch's songs were presented. Koch holds a DMA from the Eastman School of Music, an MA from Case-Western Reserve University, and a BM in Piano from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is author of the book Reflections on Composing, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. His teachers include in piano: Leonard Shure, Beryl Rubinstein and Arthur Loesser; in composition: Herbert Elwell, Arthur Shepherd, Henry Cowell and Bernard Rogers. Koch is currently a member of the piano faculty at Cuyahoga Community College-Western Campus and Baldwin Wallace Conservatory.
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