Kate Torralba

Early life

At age four, Torralba learned to play Moon River entirely by ear. She began formal training at age seven, and was sent to play a concert in Los Angeles at age nine.

Torralba attended elementary school at St. Benedict's College, and high school at St. Theresa's College. She reported that while in high school she discovered rock music and gave up classical piano. Growing up, her taste in music was eclectic, including Cecile Licad, The Carpenters, The Beatles, Nirvana, and Tori Amos, who she credits with being the reason why she started playing piano again. "When I heard 'Under the Pink,' that was mind-blowing for me." "I didn’t want to play the piano anymore, I didn’t want to be the nerd. I quit to the huge disappointment of my mom. I decided to pick up the electric guitar.”

Fashion

Kate, who had been making her own band costumes in Cebu, started selling clothes in Manila to make extra money. In 2002, she attended the Preview Ball where she met Tim Yap and Tessa Prieto-Valdes. She caught their attention because she had designed the dress she was wearing. “Tim was the first person who ever called me a designer," Torralba said in an interview, "Tessa started wearing my stuff with Joe Salazar and Rajo Laurel pieces.” "[They] sprinkled their fairy dust on me and all of a sudden, this little girl who just made clothes...during her spare time became a designer."

Magazines began featuring her designs. Realizing there was a demand for her clothes, she joined bazaars, eventually designing for Hello Kitty. Soon, Torralba had Philippine Fashion Week shows and a roster of regular clients.

After making clothes for seventeen years, eventually running a fashion design business full-time took a toll on her creativity, with the demands of a department store line, a hosiery line, and a production line sapping her creative energy. "I had so much on my plate," she told Rogue Magazine "burnout was the next thing on the menu." Torralba took time off to return to music, which she describes as her "first love." While she continues to take on select design projects, since recording her album she reports she is concentrating on her music career.

Music

After high school, Torralba played in a number of bands. Beginning with X, where she was the only girl, then with the Outskirts, an all-girl band. Then, after spending one summer in the United States listening to Alanis Morissette and No Doubt, she returned and formed her own band, Hard Candy, which she sang in. Her band joined Channel V’s Battle of the Bands and they won. At the first San Miguel Beer Cebu Music Awards, they won five out of the 12 awards, and enjoyed airplay in the region.

Hard Candy began recording its debut album, but fate intervened. After graduating from college, Kate met Loren Legarda, who offered her a job as a legislative assistant. Kate moved to Manila, leaving her band behind, after they had finished recording only two songs.

Torralba began work on her debut album in 2008, which was recorded in four different studios over four years. After two years of struggling with the competing demands of her fashion design business and working on her album, she went on sabbatical to concentrate on her music. That year, she joined a songwriting workshop on Joey Ayala's suggestion, and after receiving encouragement from Ryan Cayabyab, Gary V and Rico Blanco, she realized her songwriting had a lot of potential, and began sharing her work with people in the music industry. She believes that workshop changed the direction of her life. While the album was produced by Malek Lopez, a couple tracks were recorded in Los Angeles with producer Todd Hunter (keyboardist for Dionne Warwick), after meeting him at a chance encounter at an airport. Her drummer on those tracks was Raymond Pounds, who has played drums for Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.

After five years of songwriting and recording, Torralba's debut album, entitled Long Overdue, was released in 2013. It includes 11 tracks she wrote herself, and is distributed by MCA Universal. She described it as a culmination of all her experiences over the previous four years. The experiences "of a woman who lost her mojo, only to find it by coming home to her first love." Luis Katigbak of Esquire Magazine said "Though Kate's voice and piano playing anchor most of the tracks, there is an admirable variety on display here, as well as a sweet pop sensibility and a certain wry humor." Following the album's release, she has been "performing in shows around Europe and the US, as well as around Asia and the Philippines." Her first single off the album is "Pictures," about an old flame. After the album's release she embarked on her “Long Overdue Little European Tour" with stops in Berlin, Paris, London and Birmingham.

Torralba has performed at Fête de la Musique both in Paris and in Manila and at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, as well as in Bangkok, Singapore, Seoul, and at the Philippine International Jazz Festival.