News and music to start your week!

Congratulations to Mary Watkins, recipient of Opera America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers!  Learn more about her opera Dark River: The Fannie Lou Hammer Story as well as her Emmet Till: The Opera, scheduled for premiere in March 2022.

Women Composers Festival of Hartford is back with its latest installment of HerStory and Patricia Abreu discussing New Music for New Musicians.  Visit the website here or watch below:

ICYMI, since Marin Alsop stepped down from the Music Director role of the The Baltimore Symphony, no women lead the top 25 symphony orchestras in the U.S..    at the New York Times wonders when change is coming, and what it will take.

And speaking of Marin Alsop, the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship is accepting applications through Oct. 15.  Founded by Alsop in 2003, the Fellowship’s mission is to mentor, support, and promote women conductors as they advance in their professional careers.

Classical FM covers the work of Donne in Musica, an organization that looked at the repertoire of 100 ensembles internationally, coming to the same conclusions as we did in our 2021-2022 repertoire report.  Read on about  how few works by women are being heard internationally.

Van Magazine talks about the persistent problem of body shaming in opera, with examples ranging from the most famous of cases – that of soprano Deborah Voigt who was ousted from a role because she didn’t fit the “look” they were going for – to the more subtle systemic problems that continue to negatively impact singers today.

What did we miss?  What are you reading?  Let us know at [email protected].