So much going on — here’s some of it!
Marianna Martines, composer
On April 17, Early Music America announced the release of a new album: Marianna Martines Complete Keyboard Works from pianist Idith Meshulam Korman, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey (Signum Classics, 2026). This is the first complete modern recording of all the surviving keyboard music of Marianna Martines. Martines was a composer, keyboard virtuoso, singer, and central cultural figure in elite circles of Viennese musical life in the 18th century. In 1773, she became the first woman to be admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna. WPA publishes the score and parts of her Sinfonia.
Below is a streamable version of the album, which is also available from Signum Classics.
Laura Kaminsky, composer
On April 22–23, TIME TO ACT: A Live Opera Recording with Audience & Composer Laura Kaminsky will perform at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY. The opera’s world premiere and subsequent performances were recently staged by Pittsburgh Opera from February 28 –March 8, 2026. The opera features a group of high school students as they prepare for their production of Sophocles’ Antigone. They are joined by a new student, Alona, who comes with a formidable secret.
Composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist Crystal Manich have created an opera about how the arts can unify victims of trauma and empower them to act. It also centers the voices of young Americans who are some of the most affected by school violence. One of Kaminsky’s previous operas, As One, has become the most-produced modern opera in America.
On April 26, the Syracuse Chamber Orchestra presents its concert Women Composers Across the Centuries at CNY Arts in Syracuse, NY. Free and open to the public, it features the music of well-known historic women, including: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Amy Beach, Maddalena Lombardini-Sirmen, Florence Price, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Emilie Mayer, and Princess Amalie von Prussia.
On April 24th–25th, the Boulanger Initiative and the Strathmore will co-present their 2026 Women Composers Festival: Transcend—All Day at the Mansion at The Mansion in North Bethesda MD. The event will feature two days of concerts, vendor exhibits, and composer workshops. Performers at the event will include: flutist Claire Chase, MacArthur Fellow and the first flutist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize; Maeve Gilchrist, a harper, composer, and improviser who blends traditional Scottish music with contemporary elements; Dr. Caiti Beth McKinney, Research Manager at the Boulanger Initiative; and the members of the Argus Quartet, who will play works by Shelley Washington, Molly Herron, Germaine Tailleferre, and Fanny Mendelssohn. Tickets are available for individual events or as a day pass, and the opening concert on the 24th is free and open to the public.
On April 26 the Women’s Orchestra of Arizona will perform its Queen of Hearts: A Royal Succession of Symphonic Voice concert at the North Scottsdale United Methodist Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. The concert will weave together eras of musical authority. It opens with Otto Nicolai’s Overture to the Merry Wives of Windsor, which celebrates the titular ladies of Shakespeare’s play. A new composition, Crepuscular Thread by Heather Pryse, follows as an example of contemporary music, and then Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 as the concert’s major work.
Amy Beach, ca.1887.
Photo by Baldwin Coolidge
On April 22 E. Douglas Bomberger gives the AMS Library of Congress Lecture: “Amy Beach: Path-Breaking American Musician.” The lecture is part of the AMS/Library of Congress Lecture Series. The Library of Congress holds the manuscripts of Beach’s Mass in E-Flat Major and her Gaelic Symphony as part of the A.P. Schmidt Company Archives, both of which were premiered by the Boston Symphony in the 1890s. Beach is the earliest female composer from the United States whose works are regularly heard today. Her works marked a number of firsts for women in American music: the Gaelic Symphony was the first symphony published by an American woman, and the Mass in E-Flat was the first piece by a woman to be performed by the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra. The Gaelic Symphony also secured her membership in the group called the Second New England School of composers, of whose members Beach was the only woman.
Bohdana Frolyak, composer
The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra has announced that it will give its next Invincible Tour in August 2026, as Ukraine begins its fifth year of resistance to Russian invasion. The ensemble’s founder and music director Keri-Lynn Wilson will lead the orchestra in programs of classics from the canon of Western art music in cities across Europe and North America. On each concert they will perform a new commission, a Gloria by acclaimed Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak. The composer has dedicated the work “to all the heroes who have given their lives in this terrible war and to all who stand and defend Ukraine from this total evil.”
Finally, a non-musical observation — Today is the 60th anniversary of the first woman to run the Boston Marathon — Bobbi Gibb, who ran unofficially in 1966. Applying to enter the race (and already running 40 miles regularly), Gibb was told by officials:
We have received your request for an application for the Boston Marathon and regret that we will not be able to send you an application.
Women are not physiologically capable of running a marathon and we would not want to take on the medical liability…. The rules of International Sports and the Amateur Athletic Union, do not allow women to run races more than the sanctioned one and a half miles.
So women working in all fields can be inspired by those in the past who pursued their own dreams and goals, despite being told by authorities that they were not “capable” of doing what they were doing!
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org.