News and music to start your week!
Congratulations go to Grace Moore, pictured below, who had her work premiered by members of the New York Philharmonic as part of their Very Young Composers program. Moore, who was born in Brooklyn, said that her work was inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter movement. Read more at Classical FM, and listen in to an interview, and some excerpts of her piece below:
Members of the Dallas Symphony, participating in an event under the umbrella of their Women in Classical Music Symposium, presented a concert featuring the works of women and Black composers. They included Valerie Coleman, Stacey Garrop, and Jessie Montgomery. The Dallas Morning News has a review.
An impressive 35 ensembles in the United States are collaborating to co-commission and share works by Black and Latinx composers. The program is organized through New Music USA and titled Amplifying Voices, will feature works by Valerie Coleman, Tania León, Jessie Montgomery, and Shelley Washington, among others.
And the Boston Lyric Orchestra is starting the necessary conversations about racism in the classical music world. The Boston Globe’s Jeremy Eichler interviews Celeste Headlee, who hosts Boston Lyric Opera’s new series, “We Need to Talk.”
Also in Boston, the Zamir Chorale will perform works by Jewish Women on Tuesday, November 17. JewishBoston.com has the details. Works by Nurit Hirsh, Alice Parker, Meira Warshauer, and Molly Picon will be performed.
Don’t miss Lara Downes’ latest conversation in her Amplify series on NPR – this week she talks to multidisciplinary artist Helga Davis.
Important consideration of cultural appropriation is offered by A. Kori Hill, in I Care If You Listen‘s “Out of Context” series. From there we learn that Caroline Shaw, and the ensemble Room Full of Teeth, have been accused of cultural appropriation by Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq, for the use of Inuit throat singing in Shaw’s Partita for eight voices (which won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2013). Food for thought!
How did you celebrate Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn)’s birthday (Nov. 14)? We revisited the inspiring story of the rediscovery of her lost “Easter Sonata” (here — both the score and the story!) and this essay on her place in women’s music history, both by musicologist Angela Mace Christian. And we listened to the Easter Sonata as well as Fanny’s moving cantata Job (Hiob) for chorus and orchestra, in an excellent performance, here.
And here’s something for musicologists: City College of New York has completed the digitization of an important collection of oral history interviews from the 1970s. The Hatch-Billops Oral History collection focuses on Black American history and includes an interview with Margaret Bonds.
And more news about people of African descent, Los Angeles opera offers an online performance of Joseph Bologne’s 1780 chamber opera The Anonymous Lover! Available through Nov. 29.
What are you studying or celebrating? What are you listening to? Let us know at [email protected].