WPA News Digest – April 6, 2026

By Kathleen McGowan

Happy Monday! We offer a range of interesting news to get your week started!

Gabriela Ortiz, composer, with GRAMMY Award

YourClassical’s Performance Today has selected Gabriela Ortiz as its 2026 Classical Woman of the Year. Ortiz is a Mexican composer and music educator whose work has been performed by the premiere orchestras of the world in the past few years. For the 2024–2025 season she was composer in residence at Carnegie Hall, and her music has awards at the 2025 and 2026 GRAMMYs. Her album. Her 2024 album, Revolución diamantina, was nominated for four awards at the 2025 Grammys and received three, including best contemporary classical composition. The albums also featured the talents of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, and María Dueñas. At the 2026 GRAMMYs she won three awards for her works Yanga and Dzonot. 

In Mulieribus Ensemble

In Mulierbus Ensemble performs their concert celebrating the work of Greek lyric poet Sappho on Saturday April 18th. Taking place in Portland, OR, both performances are sold out, but a waitlist is available.  The ensemble specializes in works written before 1750, but also champions new repertoire by women composers and for women’s voices. Together with pianist Susan McDaniel, IM will perform a program of works that take inspiration directly from her poetry and indirectly from her as a historical figure and muse. Notable on their program is Undine Smith Moore’s “Love Let the Wind Cry . . . How I Adore Thee.” Other works performed are by Johannes Brahms, Ildebrando Pizzetti, and Christos Hatzis, and Charles Rose, winner of IM’s 2024 Call for Scores. The ensemble is hosting an immersive event an hour before the concert, including art, poetry, and a talk on Sappho by visiting classics scholar Dr. Ellen Greene.

ALSO in Portland, OR, on April 12 cellist Diane Chaplin premieres Israeli composer Ayala Asherov’s cello concerto, Yizkor (Remember).  Asherov wrote the original Yizkor work as a solo cello piece after the Sept 11th terrorist attacks, and expanded it into a concerto in 2025 after flare-ups of hostilities in the Middle East. It will be performed by the Jewish Community Orchestra, more information here.  

Lara St. John, violinist and activist

The Violin Channel continues to report the events of the ongoing legal battle between Lara St. John and Jonathan Carney. On April 1st they reported that she had released a new statement, claiming that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concertmaster’s post-settlement comments to The Violin Channel were “inaccurate.” Following the case being dismissed and St. John’s statement of retraction, St. John made the following statement to elaborate on the terms of the dismissal: “While I had thought that the dismissal of Mr. Carney’s lawsuit against me would have ended public discussion of the litigation by both of us, I have been made aware that Jonathan Carney chose to make a statement to The Violin Channel concerning the litigation,” St. John said today. “Some of the statements made by Mr. Carney to The Violin Channel are, in my opinion, inaccurate and require a brief response.” The full breakdown of the case can be read on their website. Online statements of support for St. John were many, and continue. We can only hope that the public failure of this suit against her will signal a change in the cone of silence that has persisted around cases and allegations of sexual assault in symphony orchestras, particularly by male members against female members.

On April 11th the collaborative trio of soprano and music educator Sofia Scattarreggia, baritone Kellen Johnson, and soprano and composer Marie Herrington will present Songstresses: Art Songs by Women Composers. As its title indicates, the program will feature art songs by women composers, including: Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, Pauline Viardot, Margaret Bonds, and Florence Price, as well as both compositions and a performance by composer Marie Herrington. Half the proceeds of the recital will be donated to The Marian House, a Baltimore community for women and their children that provides access to housing and rehabilitation services.

Amy Wurtz, composer

For the fourth year running, pianist and composer Amy Wurtz has celebrated Women’s History Month with daily livestream performances of music by women composers in March. Wurtz is from Chicago, but studied music at the University of Minnesota; her focus for Women’s History Month 2026 was on women composers with ties to the North Star State. She performs regularly with the Wurtz-Berger Duo, Access Contemporary Music, the Calumet Chamber Musicians, and serves as President of New Music Chicago. A selection of her livestreams can be viewed on the Livestreams page on her website. She has a collected playlist of the 2026 WHM livestreams on YouTube, and her YouTube channel regularly updates with her work promoting women composers and music year-round.

Mei-Ann Chen, conductor

Three women conductors have recently been appointed to or are continuing in important posts in the United States at academic institutions. At WPA, we hope that this means women are making serious gains in presence and influence at some of the nation’s best music schools. In addition to being important arenas where women should have equal chance to shape the future and artistic vision of classical music, they may also be able to exert some influence for the better on how the institutions themselves guide students toward building bright musical futures. Conductor Mei-Ann Chen has been appointed as the Director of Orchestral Activities and Chair of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music, beginning in the 2026–27 academic year. In 2024, Sarah Ioannides was appointed Associate Professor of Music, Orchestral Conducting and Director of Orchestral Activities at Boston University. These two join veteran Marin Alsop, who continues her role as Professor and Director of the Graduate Conducting Program at the Peabody Conservatory. Together, these three seem to indicate that the US east coast in particular is offering possibilities for change and a real interest in the work of women conductors and musicians—all while breaking some glass ceilings in the bargain!

Clarice Assad, composer

April 10 – 12, composer and pianist Clarice Assad will perform her own piece, FLOW, Concerto for Piano, with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (HSO) as part of their Masterworks series. The concert will be conducted by Carolyn Kuan. (Also featured will be Brahms’ 3 and Berlioz’s King Lear Overture). Assad’s piece is a piano suite with orchestral accompaniment, originally commissioned by the Albany Symphony and premiered in 2024. Assad writes that: “[the Suite] seeks a connection between the Erie Canal’s ‘flow of ideas’ and the symbolic currents of emotions I explore through the music.” It was inspired by the Erie Canal and how its construction both physically and figuratively shaped the landscape and ideas of the 19th-century United States, even in places far from where the actual construction of the canal was taking place. Among all of the people and ideas that circulated with help from the canal were social reform movements, such as women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery; the activists responsible brought their pamphlets and their messages with them, garnering support along their routes as well as in their destinations. It is both the people and the ideas they carried that particularly inspired Assad’s writing of the piece, and which seem to bring out the emotions and ideas that she celebrates in her music.