Beach’s Concerto Comes to Life!

It’s one thing to know a piece from recordings and quite another to hear it come to life in the fluid process of rehearsal, with the 100 or so musicians involved in the give and take, the learning process of  bringing an unknown work to life—I was...
Nancy Reich Honored with AMY Award

Nancy Reich Honored with AMY Award

Ossining, NY — Sept. 20. 2012 As President of Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, I am proud to grant the AMY Award for Lifetime achievement in Music Scholarship to Dr. Nancy B. Reich. Her book, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (1985; rev. ed. 2001), was the...

The Long, LONG Arc of History

With the debut of Margaret Ruthven Lang’s Dramatic Overture in 1893, the world changed: never before had an orchestral work composed by a woman been performed on the American stage.  The intervening 119 years have brought monumental social change, much of it due...

The 1.7 Percent: Distilling the 2008-2009 Repertoire Reports

Stories about “the 1%” abound in the media, but today I would like to shine a light on a far less reported, though far more relevant for this site’s purposes, statistic: the 1.7%. Our own Sarah Baer crunched the numbers (provided by the League of American...

Repertoire Statistics Report—2009-2010

Every year the League of American Orchestras releases statistics on the repertoire that is performed by member ensembles. The information is collected and painstakingly compiled so that arts administrators, musicians, and academics can take notice of trends and...

More on the Presentation of the AMY Award

It took place a week ago—the presentation of the first ever AMY Award—and what a thrill it was.  I was so honored to give the award before the full orchestra (the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra), and the near-capacity audience (almost 2400, including the 500...