Frederick Koch is a composer who became captivated by music at a young age. At Rocky River High School, he led a 10-piece band and began his advanced music studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. From there he became an infantryman in Nazi-occupied Europe where he and a few friends wrote a musical comedy to cheer up the others on Christmas Day in 1944. Upon his return to the United States, Koch earned a master’s degree in music at Western Reserve University and went on to earn a doctorate in composition from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He won the New York Composers Press Award and the Cleveland Arts Prize and earned grants from the American Music Center and the National Endowment for the Arts. Koch died in 2005 with more than 300 works in his catalogue.
Frederick Koch
Studios
New Jersey
Frederick Koch worked in the New Jersey studio.
The yellow clapboard New Jersey Studio, located on a grassy, sloping site, was funded by the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs and built as an exact replica of Monday Music Studio (1913). The studio’s porch rests on fieldstone piers that increase in height as the ground slopes to the west. Like Monday Music Studio, New Jersey…