Melissa White, violinist
Photo Credit: Dario Accosta
On June 7–9, 2024 Melissa White (soloist, violin) and Carolyn Kuan (conductor) will appear with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. They will close the orchestra’s 80th Masterworks Season with Carlos Simon’s Amen!, Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 26, and Holst’s The Planets. White is the HSO’s 2023-2024 Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence. The concerts will be held at the Belding Theater at The Bushnell in Hartford, CT. Enthusiasts of Holst’s work may be interested to know that, in addition to White’s and Kuan’s leadership on this concert, The Planets also represents the importance of women’s behind-the-scenes labor in orchestral music. A number of Holst’s women students assisted with copying the score and parts for The Planets during its production; according to Alan Gibbs (1999) the movement “Neptune” is known to be almost completely in the hand of Jane Joseph, one of Holst’s longtime collaborators.
The Plano Symphony Orchestra will perform its Women Composer Series concert on Saturday June 8, 2024 at the Addison Conference and Theater Center at 7PM CST. The concert is sponsored by the Methodist Hospital for Surgery, and will feature works by women composers, past an present. This year’s offerings include compositions chamber works by Valerie Coleman, Alyssa Morris and Amy Beach, as well as the premiere of a composition Juliette Buchanan, PSO’s resident harpist.
Annemarie Federle, hornist Photo Credit: Olivia Da Costa
Bar Avni, conductor
Photo Credit: La Maestra
Annemarie Federle will appear with the Bath Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 2024 at 7:30 PM BST at the Wiltshire Music Center in Bradford-on-Avon. She will be the featured soloist for Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto, and the orchestra will also feature Grace Williams’s Penillion and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony. Federle is a decorated young hornist whose accomplishments include orchestral appointments and recording sessions across the UK, the Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award in 2021, performing Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 at the ARD International Music Competition, and recitals at the KKL Lucerne. Most recently she was appointed Principal Horn of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2023.
Bar Avni, winner of the 3rd La Maestra International Competition for Women Conductors, will conduct Mendelssohn’s “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” with the Bayer Philharmonic on June 16, 2024 as part of a series of appearances with the orchestra.