Happy Holidays, dear WPA readers! There’s plenty of holiday cheer for women in music as 2024 comes to a close!
Conductor Stephanie Childress
Conductor Stephanie Childress will ring in the New Year on December 31 with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra. This concert will be her second return performance with the SLSO since her time as assistant conductor (2020–2023). Childress will present a programme of classical music favorites, many of them movements of larger dance works, but a few other whimsical offerings such as The Typewriter will be heard. During her previous time with the orchestra, Childress led many different types of concerts from performances of major works, to live-performed film scores such as Up and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to SLSO Youth Orchestra events. This program of favorites and updated classics promises to be yet another feather in her cap of crowd-pleasing performances. In addition to her orchestral accolades, Childress was also named to the Women of the Future Awards shortlist in 2024.
Among the usual suspects of composers on this concert—including Dvořák, Anderson, Bernstein, and Khachaturian—will be Anna Clyne‘s Masquerade for Orchestra (2013). The full program can be viewed on the SLSO website. Clyne’s Masquerade, a single-movement composition for orchestra, was originally commissioned by the BBC; it premiered in 2013 during the BBC Proms festival on the famous “Last Night of the Proms” concert, conducted by Marin Alsop. Clyne dedicated her piece affectionately to the “Prommers”—the Proms concertgoers who are regular attendees of the festival concerts over the eight-week season, some of whom are season ticket holders and attend daily concerts. Her dedication is to promenaders past and present: both contemporary concertgoers in the Albert Hall and historical concertgoers who would visit the Vauxhall Gardens for promenade concerts in the 18th century. Clyne reveals (in her program note) that she is “fascinated by the historic and sociological courtship between music and dance. Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration.” Such a relationship is what she means Masquerade to evoke.
Below is a recording of Clyne’s Masquerade made by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 2023.
The League of American Orchestras has announced recently that it has received new grants for mission-driven work aimed at “future initiatives aimed at driving youth engagement, leadership development, musician and composer diversity, and orchestra governance.” Of interest to WPA readers are the Patricia A. Richards award, which gives the LAO $125,000 to renew the Anne Parsons Leadership Program for another year. The program was established to support women and non-binary orchestra professionals in advancing their careers. Each year the program chooses a cohort of six members who receive professional mentorship and leadership training, both one-on-one and as a cohort. We look forward to great things from the forthcoming 2024–25 cohort. Other grants received also support youth participation, best practices for recruitment and retention, and the continued racial diversity of orchestra musicians.
On New Year’s Day seven women members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra will perform a concert of works by women composers at 4pm at the Ehrbar Saal in Vienna. The newly-formed ensemble is titled La Philharmonica, and their concert has been billed as an alternative to the traditional Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Day concert and a critical statement against the male hegemony of the VPO. The VPO writ large and the New Year’s concert in particular are notorious for their period repertoire and attitudes toward women—both brought in directly from the 19th century. The VPO will offer its concert from its traditional venue, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, and ten of the fifteen pieces presented will be by brothers Johann, Eduard, and Josef Strauss. In contrast, composers on the La Philharmonica alternative program at Ehrbar Saal will include: Leopoldine Blahetka, Constanze Geiger, and Mathilde Kralik. Presenting the concert will be Lara Kusztrich and Adela Frasineanu (violins), Ursula Ruppe (viola), Ursula Wex (cello), Andrea Goetsch (clarinet), and Sophie Dervaux (bassoon). Musicologist Irene Suchy will not be performing, but has also been credited with the idea for the concert.
Award-winning composer Georgia Shreve has released a new EP just in time for Christmas. Spirit of Christmas is a festive album of five original compositions that capture the spirit of the holiday. Her performing partners on the album include soprano Sarah Joy Miller, tenor Richard Troxell, conductor Steven Mercurio, and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. The album reflects Shreve’s desire to create joyful holiday music that maintains the emotional depth of her other non-holiday works. In a genre like holiday music where classic pieces are often mashups of sentiment, atmosphere, and nostalgia, Shreve has her work cut out for her. These new additions are more than just re-imaginings of old favorites, yet they don’t completely ignore the classic orchestra sounds that draw listeners in and keep them coming back.
The album can be streamed via Spotify and Apple Music.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at [email protected]
From all of us at Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, we wish a joyful holiday season to you all!