The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra
Photo credit: Roger Mastroianni, 2018
There’s lots going on for women in music this week!
On November 10, 2024 the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra opened its 90th anniversary season with a program of 19th century favorites: the overture from the Verdi/Solera collaboration Giovanna D’arco (Joan of Arc), Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D, and Brahms Symphony No. 4. Founded in 1935 as one of numerous women’s orchestras across the United States, the CWO is both the longest running women’s orchestra and the last of its kind still active from that era. Such ensembles—orchestras, certainly, but also bands of differing instruments—were common the 19th and 20th centuries, and offered women musicians opportunities to play in large ensembles. The group continues this original mission as well as offering accessible and often free arts programming to its community in Cleveland. Their 2024/2025 season offerings include a holiday concert at Judson Manor on December 9th, their 90th Anniversary Concert on March 30 (featuring music by Beethoven, Brouwer, Schubert and Britten), and and an opera collaboration with The Cleveland Opera on April 27 (repertoire TBA). Given the wealth of talent and perseverance that women musicians continue to display—as they have always done—perhaps these ensembles are due for a revival!
Dr. Samantha Ege, musicologist and pianist
From November 13–17, the American Musicological Society held its annual conference at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, IL. In addition to numerous papers on women in music spanning the Middle Ages to 2024, the Committee on Women & Gender invited musicologist and performer Samantha Ege to give an endowed lecture, “‘She Proclaimed a Chicago Renaissance’: Black Women’s Classical World-Making.”
On November 22, the Iranian Female Composers Association will present Composing Iran a multi-genre collaboration with members of the Seattle Symphony at the Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center. IFCA celebrates music from Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and works to support female and non-binary identifying composers from that community.
Below is a recording of the IFCA and International Contemporary Ensemble’s 2019 Composer Portrait Performance at their Mostly Mozart Festival. This performance was recorded at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium.
On November 23, curator and pianist Lara Downes will present her program “Routes” with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Dom Flemons at the Autry Museum of the American West. Downes is LACO’s first creative partner for its CURRENTS program, and has designed her program as a journey through American music.
Below is a recording of her NPR Tiny Desk Concert in 2023, where her program included an arrangement of Schubert’s “Frühlingsglaube,” Clarice Assad‘s “World of Change,” an arrangement of J.S. Bach’s “Sleepers Awake,” Hooshyar Khayam’s “Jazz On Her Lips,” and Shawn E. Okpebholo’s arrangement of the traditional tune “Amazing Grace.”
On November 24, 2024 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will perform Ellen Reid‘s Body Cosmic (2024) and violinist Lisa Batiashvili as soloist on Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, op. 63. (Also included will be the Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.) Batiashvili is the Artistic Director of Audi Sommerkonzerte, Ingolstadt, has many international awards to her name and regularly appears with the premiere orchestras of Europe and the United States.
Below is the playlist of Reid’s most recent album, Big Majestic (2024).
Applications are now open (from November 15, 2024 until January 15, 2025) for the LunArt Composers Hub. Six female composers will be invited for a week of intensive professional development during the LunART Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. The festival celebrates both contemporary and historic composers, and will be held from May 27 – June 1 2025. This year’s Composer-in-Residence will be ISCM Honorary Member Chen Yi.
Below is a recording of composer Emily Joy Sullivan‘s Dangerous Curves Ahead (2018; violin, cello, and piano), performed at the 2019 festival as part of LunART’s Emerging Composers Educational Program.
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