Elizabeth Recommends: Holiday Music for Orchestra

Elizabeth Recommends: Holiday Music for Orchestra

by Elizabeth de Brito Happy Holidays, everybody! As the festive season is firmly underway, I’ve curated a selection of the finest holiday orchestral and choral music written by women. Whilst the gazillionth performance of Handel’s Messiah may be a longstanding...
Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day!

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day!

  On this day when we all celebrate Ireland and our (real or embellished) Irish heritage, let’s also take some time to listen to works by women that pay homage to the Emerald Isle.   Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972) was born and raised in Boston....

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day – arguably, one of American’s favorite holidays to celebrate – here is “Irish Love Song” by Margaret Ruthvan Lang.   Lang was the first American woman to have an orchestral composition performed...

Handel and Haydn Society Celebrates 200 Years

The Handel and Haydn Society – the oldest continually performing arts organization in the U.S. – is celebrating their bicentennial this year.  Founded in Boston in 1815, the chorus has made important U.S. premieres of works by the “great...

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...