Combining her love for music and traveling, Kathy Henkel is currently thriving as the owner and composer of Sign of the Silver Birch Music and has retired as an educational consultant with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She mostly writes instrumental and chamber music, and decided to self-publish so that she could take her music out to the people personally. Over the years, her music has been performed at festivals in Gubbio, Italy, Montevarchi, Italy, and Fairbanks, Alaska, as well as at premieres in England, Austria, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Ms. Henkel attributes her success thus far to never giving up. Her company only consists of three people, but they all go above and beyond to keep everything running smoothly.
Previously, Ms. Henkel garnered experience as a liner note writer for Pro Piano Records, a visiting in-school classroom speaker and on-stage host of the Music Outreach Program at the Chamber Music/LA Festival Program, a program annotator for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and a program annotator and educational consultant for the Chamber Music/LA Festival. She has also been a scriptwriter and producer for KUSC-FM, a music reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, a music researcher for Paramount Pictures, a member of the administrative staff of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and a participant of the Dana School New Music Festival. Notably, Ms. Henkel wrote 300 broadcast scripts for the aforementioned radio station. Her professional designations include a Master of Music and a Bachelor of Music from California State University, Northridge, and a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. In school, she studied under Frank Campo and Aurelio de la Vega.
When Ms. Henkel isn’t working, she enjoys traveling, gardening, astronomy, and hiking the Cornwall coastal path. She is also involved with a variety of industry-related organizations, including the National Academy of Recording Arts, the American Federation of Musicians Local 47, the Phi Beta Women’s Professional Fraternity, Delta Omicron, and the National Association of Composers/USA.