There’s lots to listen to this week as we gear up for Women’s History Month!
Beginning on February 27th and running through March 1st, Tempesta di Mare will present its recital of Italian women’s music from the Baroque era at venues in the Philadelphia area, including Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Trinity @ 22nd, and Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. The recital, Le donne musicali, will feature vocal and instrumental works by Agata Cantora della Pietà and Anna Bon, as well as pieces written for named women musicians of the all-female Venetian Ospedali by Vivaldi, Gasparini and Porpora. The Ospedali were Baroque-era orphanages and convent schools that produced fabulously trained female musicians on an unprecedented scale. The recital is a parts of the Hidden Virtuosas series, an ongoing project by Tempesta to perform the music of the Ospedali and bring them into listeners’ awareness. Tempesta, Philadelphia’s premiere Baroque orchestra, focuses on performing rediscovered masterpieces by baroque composers in historically informed styles—what is commonly called “HIP” or “historically informed performance.” Every concert offers “the thrill of discovery” because they don’t just perform the most famous works by the most famous composers; when they are not uncovering lost compositions that may not have been heard aloud in 300 years, they are creating new performing editions that bring once-obscure compositions to new ensembles as well as to new listeners.
Below is a recording of Tempesta’s performance of Nicola Porpora’s Sinfonia to Polifemo, recorded on May 18, 2025 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, PA.
On Feb. 26, The University of Rhode Island Symphony Orchestra performs Dr. Eliane Aberdam‘s Violin Concerto “In Memoriam”, with violinist Alexey Shabalin, directed by Dr. Luis Víquez. The Concerto was premiered in Ukraine in August 2023, and is dedicated to fallen Ukrainian fighters in the war. The concert takes place on the URI campus in Kingston, RI, and is part of the national conference of the College Orchestra Directors Association, and also includes music by Franz Schubert, Richard Rogers, and a performance by the URI Jazz Big Band.
On March 1st the Metropolitan Orchestra Chamber Ensemble (rotating roster of musicians from New York City’s Met Orchestra & Met Opera members) will perform works by Amy Beach, Caroline Shaw, and three arrangements of music by Florence Price by Hannah Cope. Caroline Shaw’s Aurora Borealis and Entr’acte, Amy Beach’s Pastorale for Woodwind Quintet, Op. 151, and arrangements of Florence Price’s “Sketches in Sepia,” “On a Quiet Lake,” and “Your Hands in Mine” will have a hearing. (Also programmed are Barber’s Summer Music, John Adams Shaker Loops, and George Walker’s Music for Brass (Sacred and Profane)). The concert promises to be a fantastic tasting menu of American music.
Below is the chamber orchestra version of Shaw’s Entr’acte, performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra in 2019 at the Musco Center for the Arts at Chapman University.
On March 5th, composer Gabriela Lena Frank and conductor Marin Alsop will perform the world premiere of Picaflor: A Future Myth for Orchestra with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The work is a joint commission by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. Alsop and the Philadelphia Orchestra will reprise the piece at the festival on July 6th.
Frank’s programmatic work depicts an original futuristic story by the composer in ten sections, inspired by Andean Peruvian mythology. The title character, Picaflor, is a rebellious hummingbird from legends of a sky kingdom ruled by a sun/creator god, and messengers of the Inca empire on Earth called the chaski. A core belief that the piece draws from this mythology is pachacuti, the idea that every few hundred years a cataclysmic transformation arrives to transform the world or an era into something new. Through these mythological references the composer expresses both her pride in her indigenous Peruvian ancestry and her 21st-century climate activism. Frank dedicates both her residency with the Philadelphia Orchestra and her composition Picaflor: A Future Myth to Kaija Saariaho.
Below is a recording of Frank’s Three Latin American Dances for Orchestra, performed in 2025 by the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jacob Joyce.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org.