SHADES AND PERSPECTIVES is a musical topographical experience which is intriguing and penetrating. It is powerful, but also vulnerably intimate. Her music leaves the listener wrapped in an audio world of brilliantly colored sonorities of the soul. Born in Los Angeles, California, Catherine Towbin started composing and playing the piano at age seven. Except for some brief exposure to various musical sources, she was largely self taught until the age of twelve. She then began her formal piano studies with Leah Effenbach with whom she studied for five years. Leah Effenbach was a graduate of piano of both The Peabody Institute and The Julliard. From 1982 until 1986 Catherine attended Samford University where she studied both music and chemistry. She graduated with honors and received the Bachelor Of Music Degree. Throughout her college education she studied piano with Witold Turkiewicz who is a former student of Rudolph Serkin at The Curtis Institute Of Music. Catherine won the 1984 Concerto-Aria competition with the Khachaturian D-flat piano concerto and performed with The Alabama Symphony Orchestra. She was the alternative winner of the 1985 Concerto-Aria competition with the Beethoven Third piano concerto in c minor. In 1986 Catherine went to France where she performed and accompanied soloists. Since then she has also performed in the United States, The Netherlands, Belgium and Romania. Catherine moved to Europe in 1991 and currently lives in Belgium. Catherine's music has a visual element and is accessible to both the intellectually discriminating listener as well as the spiritually intuitive listener. Although Catherine is a contemporary composer, she does not feel a specific need to be exclusively identified with the more typical techniques of this period. "It is not my desire to write music that could potentially push a borderline schizophrenic over the edge into a full blown episode just to make my artistic statement. I also don't believe in being a rebel without a cause. I just create music that in my own way brings people to a place inside themselves that they perhaps wouldn't otherwise experience.I use whatever tools necessary to achieve my artistic goal."