Vivian Fung: Canadian Composer with a Non-Western Sound

by | Mar 2, 2014

Vivian Fung is a contemporary Canadian composer known for blending Western musical forms with non-Western instrumentation. Fung began her compositional training under the tutelage of another well-known and often performed Canadian composer: Violet Archer.  Her...
Libby Larsen: Composer and Advocate

Libby Larsen: Composer and Advocate

by | Mar 1, 2014

Libby Larsen is distinguished as one of the most prolific and performed living American composers, as well as one of the greatest advocates for rising musicians and composers.  Her catalog of works—which includes over 500 pieces spanning genres from art songs to...
Women Being Heard (or not) This Season

Women Being Heard (or not) This Season

by | Feb 1, 2014

That the professional music world, and professional orchestras in particular, aren’t known for welcoming women musicians with open arms isn’t news. It is a truth and a challenge that women have always faced and, as was recently reported by the BBC, is an ongoing...
Joan Tower Performed (and Recorded) by Nashville Symphony

Joan Tower Performed (and Recorded) by Nashville Symphony

by | Nov 23, 2013

Tonight! (Nov. 23)  Not only will WPA Performance Grant recipient Nashville Symphony present two works by Joan Tower—Stroke (2010) and Violin Concerto (1991)—it will also record them for a 2014 release by Naxos, the same label that released Tower’s...
Kaija Saariaho on Sexism in Classical Music

Kaija Saariaho on Sexism in Classical Music

by | Nov 7, 2013

“In reading more studies about our recent history in this matter, I have understood that the situation is not slowly getting better, but that the improvements seem to have stopped a while ago. In politics, economy, research and culture in general, women still...