What Makes the Unbound Symphony Special?

By Katie A. Berglof

On March 8, 2026, Unbound Symphony launched with remarks from its founding members in honor of International Women’s Day. During the event, founding board member Katie Berglof shared a speech on what makes Unbound Symphony distinct and why this work matters. Her words deeply moved the room, with many brought to tears.

What follows is the written version of her address:

Good evening everyone.
I was asked to answer a simple question tonight.

What is special about Unbound Symphony?

To answer that, I have to take you back to where my own musical story began.

I grew up in North Dakota. And when I say North Dakota, I mean the kind of place where there is nothing but grain fields and barley for miles, and the town where I went to school had about fifty people. My boyfriend likes to joke that technically it was not even a town. It was a village.

This small town is called Sherwood.

There was football. There was basketball. There were farm chores. But there were no arts.

My twin sister and I were very energetic and very creative kids. The closest thing we had to music education was the piano in our living room and a kind church pianist who started giving us lessons when we were about five years old.

Then one day in the early 1990s we saw something on television that completely changed how we imagined our future.

The Disney Channel was televising a youth orchestra program. Hundreds of young musicians, around our age, from all across the country, playing together in a symphony orchestra.

For two kids who had only ever played music alone on a living room piano, it felt like discovering another planet.

An orchestra? What’s that?
All these sounds!
What are all those instruments?
Children playing music together?

We looked at each other and knew we want to be part of that world.

There was just one small problem.

We lived in the middle of nowhere.

We did not have instruments.
We did not have teachers.
And there certainly was not an orchestra anywhere nearby.

But fate has funny timing.

When we were about thirteen, we visited cousins in a larger town. One had a trumpet. Another had a French horn. We begged to try them. That was the first time I ever held the instrument that would eventually take me to music school.

We were hooked. We knew these were meant to be our instruments. So my twin sister and I did what determined teenagers do. We bought a band method book and tried to self-teach ourselves how to play.

In the year 2000 our family moved to what I believed at the time was a massive city.

…..in Iowa.

Actually, it was probably closer to a mid-sized city, called Carroll.

And for the first time in our lives, my sister and I joined a real band program.

I cannot even describe what that felt like! To suddenly be surrounded by other young people who enjoyed music as much as we did. To make sound together. To build something larger than yourself.

Our band director became the first person who truly saw us as musicians. He told our parents we had unusual potential and asked if we had ever considered careers in music.

My parents were shocked. They had never imagined music could be a profession.
But in that moment, our dream suddenly felt possible.

Those years in high school were some of the mostjoyful musical experiences of my life! Yes, we won competitions and scholarships. But what mattered most was the community. The friendships. The feeling of belongingin an ensemble.

And then I arrived in college, excited to continue on my path growing as a musician.
But something started to feel different.

I noticed there were very few women in the brass sections. I played almost exlusively in principal roles, yet, I often found myself leading sections of men who did not want to follow the lead of a woman. My twin sister experienced the same thing in trumpet sections, and that was even harder for me to witness because I knew she deserved better treatment.

Suddenly the orchestral world that once felt so magical started to feel exclusive. Like there were hidden rules and I was already at a disadvantage.

It felt like the door had quietly closed again. And that was heartbreaking.

I started to work extremely hard to prove I belonged there. I practiced constantly. I pushed my body beyond its limits. Eventually, I developed focal embouchure dystonia, a neurological disorder that ended my ability to play, along with any future performing career on the French horn.

For a while, I wondered if my story with orchestras had simply ended there.

But life has a way of opening different doors.

Over the past fifteen years, I have devoted my work to advancing musician health and injury awareness, advocating for gender equity in orchestras, and writing on the need for structural reform in the field—areas that have long been considered difficult or even discouraged topics within the orchestral profession.

Yet. I have watched the orchestra field slowly begin to confront issues it once refused to talk about. Musician injuries. Power dynamics. Harassment. Inequity.

And I have also watched a new generation of musicians begin asking powerful questions. Questions that my generation often did not feel strong enough to ask.

What if orchestras could be different?

What if orchestras were places where artists supported one another instead of competing for survival?

What if musicians could thrive without sacrificing their health, their dignity, or their voices?

That…is why Unbound Symphony is special.

Because it is not just another orchestra. It is a community built intentionally around support, collaboration, and possibility.

In many ways, Unbound Symphony is the orchestra I wish had existed when I was that young woman pursuing a career in music.

The orchestra where every musician feels seen. The orchestra where leadership looks different.

The orchestra where young girls watching from the audience can finally imagine themselves on stage.

Tonight, the support you give does more than fund a concert.

It helps pay the artists who will bring this music to life. It supports the soloists, the musicians, and the composers whose voices deserve to be heard. And most importantly, it helps build a new kind of orchestral community. One where the next generation of musicians will not have to fight so hard just to belong.

Thank you for being part of that vision tonight.