WPA News Digest – April 28, 2025

Composer Karena Ingram (UMBC, 2016) has received a commission from the Virginia B. Toulmin Orchestral Commissions Program. The Toulmin Commissions Program is under the umbrella of the League of American Orchestras, and partners with the American Composers Orchestra to form the commissioning initiative. It connects orchestra consortiums that wish to commission new works with composers to write them, and organizes repeat performances of those works. On May 17–18, 2025 the Memphis Symphony Orchestra will premiere Ingram’s piece RAINN. The piece is slated for further performances during the 2025-2026 orchestral seasons of the Asheville Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra Nova Northwest. Repeat performances, especially of large orchestral works, are essential for composers to get their music into the ears of listeners as well as for listeners and musicians to get to know the composers writing music for orchestra. We’re looking forward to hearing this piece and many others sure to follow from this rising American composer!

Violinist Esther Abrami has released a new album titled Women in collaboration with Kim Barbier (piano), Lavinia Meijer (harp), Esther Abrami Quintet, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Irene Delgado-Jiménez. The album features a mix of classic and contemporary pieces by fourteen women composers, including: Pauline Viardot, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Teresa Carreño, Ethel Smyth, Rachel Portman, Anne Dudley, the world premiere of Ina Boyle’s Violin Concerto, and a composition titled “Transmissions” written and performed by Abrami herself.

The album is available from Presto Music or to stream via her website and on a number of other platforms.

Recently, Marin Alsop has spoken to The Times about the continued difficulties faced by women in classical music, specifically as conductors and in leadership but also more broadly as members of large ensembles such as orchestras. In The Times on April 21, David Sanderson reported that Alsop described the difficulties as persistent “archaic, old-fashioned views” on such generalities as “women cannot conduct,” and she later revealed her shock that she hears this response from young male conductors as well as older ones. Such views were prominent in 2013 when she first conducted the Last Night of the Porms, and have continued into the present. The article is a reminder of many firsts; though things may seem bleak when campaigns for rights and representation plateau, there is reason for hope. Also has been confirmed to conduct the world premiere orchestral version of composer Laura Karpman’s opera Balls—a musical dramatization of Billie Jean King’s 1973 tennis victory. The opera will be performed as part of the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Philharmonia Orchestra.