Samantha Burgess, Director, Community Women’s Orchestra
There’s lots of news and listening this week!
The Community Women’s Orchestra has announced Samantha Burgess’s appointment as Music Director, promoted from her position as Interim Director in the 2024–25 season. She is also Assistant Conductor for the Berkeley Symphony and Berkeley Community Chorus. Previously she has been Assistant Conductor of the Westerville Symphony (OH), the Galesburg Community Chorus (IL), and the Oxford University Philharmonia (UK). She directed the Community Women’s Orchestra programs “The Magic of Music” featuring the world premiere of June Bonacich’s The Visit with Grandpa and Victoria Bond’s The Frog Prince for orchestra and narrator, and “La Femme Française” which included Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 in G minor.
On June 2 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Andrea Tarrodi’s tone poem Liguria on a program that also included Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Tarrodi’s piece was originally commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony in 2012 and has had numerous subsequent performances, including the BBC Proms in 2017. She describes it as a “walking tour” among the fishing villages Riomaggiore, Manarola, Monterosso, Vernazza, and Corniglia connected by paths through the mountains on the northwest coast of Italy.
Here is a recording of Tarriodi’s tone poem by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, led by Dalia Stasevska, from April 2024.
Gwenyth Walker, composer
On June 29th the New England Symphonic Ensemble‘s Carnegie Hall program will include two pieces by New England composer Gwenyth Walker: Songs for Women’s Voices and The Tree of Peace, both conducted by Kathleen Hansen. Participating groups on the concert will be the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras and choirs from California, Michigan, and North Carolina. Walker’s catalog includes more than 400 commissioned works, and audiences appreciate its energy, drama, humor, and inventive genre combinations. She draws inspiration from traditional folk music, American poetry, and drama, writing for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and soloists.
Dr. Walker is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music, and a former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory. She left the academy 1982 in order to compose full time, and has pursued collaborative projects with the musicians playing her music ever since. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vermont Arts Council in 2000 and the Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 from Choral Arts New England. In 2020 the Hartt School of Music presented her with the Hartt Alumni Award.
Carolyn Kuan, conductor Photo: Ruth Sovronsky
The 10th Director of the Hartford Symphony Carolyn Kuan is stepping down after sixteen years in the post. She joined the orchestra in 2011 for her initial three-year term, and has had her contract renewed several times in the intervening years. Kuan was both the first woman to hold the post and the youngest conductor to do so as of 2025. Her tenure with the orchestra has seen an increase of music by Black and female composers on its programs as well as world premieres and tested contemporary works. She also steered the orchestra through the 2020 pandemic and union negotiations with HSO management. In 2003, Kuan received the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship (as the first woman), and the fellowship facilitated her residency at the 2004 Salzburg Festival. She was also the first winner of the Taki Concordia Fellowship and has received other honors from the Conductors Guild, the Susan W. Rose Fund for Music, and the Women’s Philharmonic.
In Other News:
On June 7th the Lake Washington Symphony Orchestra gave an all-women concert, featuring the work of composers Soon Hee Newbold, Florence Price, Valerie Coleman, Stella Sung, Augusta Holmès, Lili Boulanger, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Lady Gaga. The concert will be available for viewing on their website.
Three out of the five Impact Award winners at the Deadline Sound & Screen awards (as part of South by Southwest London) are women: Natalie Holt, Nainita Desai, and Anne Dudley. These are the inaugural awards as Deadline’s Sound & Screen makes its UK debut.
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