March is ending! And with the end or Women’s History Month, we unfortunately find fewer orchestras including works by women. The point of Women’s History Month is to celebrate the contributions of women, which in the past were so often excluded, and to understand the struggles and that women had to undergo in order to achieve their goals. (An official US perspective is explained here.) But the ideal we hope for is that inclusion and recognition of women’s works can be a normal, every day part of our social fabric. If we do not find that representation occurring, then the activities and Women’s History Month appear to be mere tokenism, and even a tool for justifying the suppression and exclusion the rest of the year. So, with that sad caveat, here is some of what’s going on …..
On April 1, the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg presents “Impressions françaises,” with four evocative views of France. Two of the four composers, César Franck and Vincent D’Indy, are well-known, but the other two are less so — the Ukrainian-born Theodore Akimenko and the Irish-born Augusta Holmès (1847-1903). Holmès’ “La nuit et l’amour” is included — this work is an orchestral “Interlude” from her five-movement choral-orchestral patriotic work Ode symphonique: Ludus pro Patria. While the atmostpereic “La nuit et l’amour” is well-known (thanks to the edition available on IMSLP,by the industrious Compos(h)er editing project), no one seems to have recorded or explored any other movements of Ludus pro Patria ….
April 13, Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances for Wind Ensemble will be performed as part of the Boston University’s School of Music’s annual concert at Symphony Hall. Montgomery is composer-in residence at BU for 2025-26. The April 13 concert also includes music by Stravinsky and Beethoven.
Sarah Kirkland Snider, composer
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s latest album, Forward into Light (2026), has been released and is available for purchase and streaming. The album is a collection of commissioned pieces from her recent work, performed by the Metropolis Ensemble and led by artistic director Andrew Cyr. The album’s title work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, and was inspired by the women’s suffrage movement in America. The following piece, Drink the Wild Ayre, is a re-orchestration of one of Snider’s string quartets. The original was written for the Emerson String Quartet as their final commission before retirement; the re-imagined version uses string orchestra and harp, and features the talents of harpist Noël Wan. The third work, Eye of Mnemosyne, is an eight-movement collaborative multimedia orchestral work that combines the composition talents of Snider and the visual art of Deborah Johnson. The Rochester Philharmonic commissioned it, and its movements explore themes of memory, innovation, and culture through both photography and music. The final piece, Something for the Dark, was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra after Snider was the winner of its Lebenbom Competition in 2014.
On April 3rd, Brightwork New Music will perform “Ring of Fire,” its concert of chamber music by four composers drawn from cultures ringing the Pacific Ocean at the Sierra Madre Playhouse. Composers include Latin Grammy winner Gabriela Lena Frank and Akshaya Avril Tucker, as well as Chinary Ung, and Andy Akiho. The ensemble of clarinet/violin/cello/piano is in residence at the Playhouse. The headlining work is Hilos, a quartet by Gabriel Lena Frank, Musical America’s 2026 Composer of the Year. Her opera El último sueño de Frida y Diego, is scheduled for new productions at the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago this year. Akshaya Avril Tucker’s Melting draws on music and dance traditions of South Asia. Tucker is an alumna of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.
Lara St. John, violinist and activist
On March 27th, The Violin Channel released coverage of ongoing activism by Lara St. John surrounding the retirement of Jonathan Carney, concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Carney will retire at the end of the 2026/27 season. St. John—who has been fearlessly and tenaciously confronting sexual abuse in the classical music industry for decades, and even more intensely with the release of her documentary Dear Lara—expressed dismay when Carney was made the orchestra’s first Concertmaster Laureate in spite of his career being marked by allegations of inappropriate behavior toward his orchestra colleagues. In a now-deleted social media post, St. John made her sentiments clear: “It is appalling to me that this Carney concertmaster is now allowed to retire with heaps of laurels, while a lot of women have been harassed and abused over a period of decades by this guy … It’s well-known that he asked many women in the orchestra for sex. Katherine Needleman famously said no 20 years ago, and he has treated her very badly ever since.”
Full coverage by The Violin Channel includes archived materials and links to reporting by The Baltimore Banner. There has been noticeable speculation since the documents’ release that St. John has been placed under press restrictions from speaking about the incident or any disputed allegations. This is a developing story, and WPA will continue to update as new information becomes available.
On April 12 the Arizona Winds Concert Band presents their concert Trailblazers: Celebrating Women Composers – A Concert Honoring Visionary Women Composers in Surprise, Arizona. The program features works by living women composers for wind band, including: Carol Britton Chambers’ Fanfare Esprit, and Symphonic Dance No. 1; Erika Svanoe’s Steampunk Suite (in four movements); Yukiko Nishimura’s Key West Pink!; Early Light by Carolyn Bremer, inspired by “The Star‑Spangled Banner”; and Julie Giroux’s Italian Rhapsody, Culloden (in three movements), and “Integrity, Fanfare and March” from her three-movement work, No Finer Calling. If you’re not already a regular listener to wind band music, the works on this program and others by the same composers are widely recorded and available.
Below is a recording of Giroux’s Italian Rhapsody, performed at the 62nd annual Midwest Clinic in 2008 and later released on Mark Records in 2012. This recording features the US Army Field band under the direction of Arnald D. Gabriel.
Planning ahead! Malmö Opera announces their 2026-27 season, which will include Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, May 22-June 9, 2027. The production (sung in French) was developed in Glyndebourne several years ago. We are happy to see this moving opera being performed again in this illuminating production (Liane Curtis reviewed the Glyndebourne production here).
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org