Women and Music Festival: Eastman Community Music School

by Liane Curtis | Mar 30, 2014

The first of three Festival concerts on Saturday, March 29, was performed by students of the Eastman Community Music School.  Boys and girls performed works composed by women, and four girls performed really lovely pieces that they had written themselves.  The Lowry...

Dana Suesse: Musician, Composer, and Lyricist

by sarah | Mar 29, 2014

Dana Suesse (1909-1987), born in Kansas City, Montana, was a child vaudeville star who eventually left the circuit and moved to New York with her mother when she was just seventeen.  There she began to compose larger works and made a name for herself.  Among her more...

Wang Jie on the Fast Track

by SMBrown | Mar 28, 2014

In a relatively short time Wang Jie has made quite an impression on the classical music establishment. Last June the Orchestra of the League of Composers premiered Wang’s Oboe Concerto for the Genuine Hearts of Sadness, a work it had commissioned with funding in...

Rolande Falcinelli

by sarah | Mar 27, 2014

Rolande Falcinelli (1920-2006) was a French born organist, pianist, composer, and educator. Falcinelli studied at the Paris Conservatory, and her teachers included Marcel Dupré.  Falcinelli studied and performed  Dupré’s works throughout her life, once playing a...

Suzanne Sorkin

by sarah | Mar 26, 2014

Today’s events at the Rochester Women in Music Festival feature works by Suzanne Sorkin.  Sorkin (b. 1977) has been in featured in festivals throughout the United States and is actively commissioned (including from  the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard...

Schneider Crosses Over to Classical–and Wins a Grammy

by SMBrown | Mar 25, 2014

Maria Schneider has a knack for choosing to work in musical genres where women have traditionally been least represented and recognized—and then flipping the script to win all kinds of renown and accolade. As a jazz composer and big-band leader, Schneider has been...