So much going on as the fall season of concerts and events is in full swing!
Julia Perry at the McDowell Colony
On September 27–28, Washington University in St. Louis will host a symposium on the music and work of Julia Perry. The event will include guest lectures, a roundtable, and a concert of Perry’s music. The Roundtable and lectures on the 27th and 28th will explore the different roles that Perry played in her musical life—singer, composer, modernist‚ meta-modernist—as well as ideas of gender and Cold War anxiety in different works. The concert on the 28th will feature a selection of Perry’s mid-century works: Prelude for Piano (1962); I’m a Poor Little Orphan in this World (1952) with Lucia Bradford, mezzo-soprano; How Beautiful are the Feet (1951) also featuring Bradford; Six Contrasts for Baritone and Piano (1954) featuring Thandolwethu Mamba, baritone; Quinary Quixotic Songs for Baritone and Chamber Ensemble (1976) also featuring Mamba; Pastoral for Flute and String Sextet (1959); and Stabat Mater (1951) also featuring Lucia Bradford. The Six Contrasts and Quinary Quixotic Songs are pieces of Perry’s repertoire that have been recently recovered; the Stabat Mater is the one of the most widely-known of her works. The program will include details of her life and music as the performers bring an original American compositional voice back to the concert hall.
Composer Florence Price Credit: CSO
On October 4–6, 2024 the Florence Price Festival Symposium will be held at Temple University in Philadelphia. The event is being co-sponsored by Opera Philadelphia, The International Florence Price Festival, and Temple University’s Boyer College Vocal Arts Department. This is a three-day event that will celebrate the life and works of Florence Price, as well as some of her contemporaries who were also historically marginalized composers. The Symposium is planning to present materials for varied audiences, including: podium and poster presentations, lightning talks, panel discussions, masterclasses, and lecture recitals.
The Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, CA will be screening The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a documentary by filmmaker Molly O’Brien about her aunt Orin O’Brien’s trailblazing career as a double bassist with the New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein hired her as the Philharmonic’s first female musician in 1966). In the documentary, Orin looks back after retirement on the work of her remarkable career, and offers her audience the advice that the key to enjoying life is to “play second fiddle.” The 35-minute long film will be screened from September 23–26, 2024.
On September 29, the Munich Chamber Orchestra will begin its season with a concert of music by women in its “MKO Songbook” series. The program will include: Gloria Coates’s Symphony No. 1 Music on open strings; Nina Šenk’s Chant for string orchestra; Clara Iannotta’s dead wasps in the jam-jar (ii); and Coates’s Wir tönen allein for soprano, timpani, percussion and string orchestra. Iannotta’s work was the orchestra’s seventh commissioned composition in 2015. Tickets available here.
Below is the “Theme and Transformation” from Coates’s Symphony No.1, recorded by the Munich Chamber Orchestra in 2022.
The Ulster Orchestra (Belfast, NI) has commissioned a new work by composer Úna Monaghan titled “Townsend Street,” which premiered on Saturday September 21, 2024. The orchestra has been working with residents in the neighborhood of its new home to turn the sounds of their childhood into music. This is part of a series of community works by the Belfast City Council (Belfast 2024); the orchestra is undertaking theirs after moving into the Townsend Presbyterian Church, which closed in 2022 after 200 years of continuous operation. Townsend Street, where the church is located, connects two Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, and the older local residents have lived through a remarkable amount of turbulent history.
The National Symphony Orchestra (of the United States) has announced that on February 27 and March 1, 2025 it will host the all-female Lorelei Ensemble in a performance of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story, a large-scale choral work with texts drawn from letters written by suffragettes. Wolfe’s piece is paired with Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov on the program, conducted by Marin Alsop.
Below is an excerpt of Her Story, performed by the Lorelei Ensemble with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2023.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Contact us at [email protected].