An exciting October keeps moving along!
On October 10th, northern Irish composer Amelia Clarkson made her debut with her home orchestra—the Ulster Orchestra— at Belfast’s Ulster Hall premiered her piece The Rain Keeps Coming. The piece is an Ulster Orchestra commission, significant in its own right as a commissioned composition from a woman composer and in Clarkson’s position as the youngest female composer ever commissioned by the orchestra — she is 29. Clarkson is also the 2022 Mendelssohn Scholar at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where she is pursuing Ph.D. studies in composing new music for dance. She has described The Rain Keeps Coming as, “a celebration of the relentlessness of life. We move through these constant cycles of joy and pain, leading us to renewal and reflection. At times it feels overwhelming, as though we’re drenched by it all, and yet there is also wonder in that persistence. This piece is about holding resilience and fragility in the same breath, and finding the magic in feeling alive, even when caught in a downpour.”
Below are two videos: the first (a short) of Amelia Clarkson talking about her inspiration for The Rain Keeps Coming, and the second a recording from 2025 of her I float between, 2 extracts for orchestra (2024) performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gavin Maloney.
The Royal Philharmonic Society has announced that it will be the new home of the Ambache Charitable Trust (ACT), recently re-branded as the RPS Ambache Fund. Musician Diana Ambache established the original fund 40 years ago as the ACT, with the goal of raising awareness for and increasing engagement with music composed by women. In this mission, Diana established the ACT which has done so much to raise the profile of women composers and help get their music heard. With the funds its has bestowed at the RPS, the Ambache Fund will annually offer grants to UK-based performers, ensembles, venues, and festivals. These grants will fund initiatives that promote overlooked music by historic women composers and do educational work to help audiences discover them.
Gabriela Ortiz, composer
The UK’s Philharmonia Orchestra premiered Gabriela Ortiz‘s Si el oxígeno fuera verde (“If oxygen were green”) in September in the Netherlands, a new piece by Ortiz inspired by the environment. The orchestra will perform the piece in London, Vienna, and on a major US tour that will culminate at Carnegie Hall. The work is described as “a bubbling forest of gentle arpeggios and trills, which eventually coheres into an insistent dance with echoes of John Adams and the Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring.” Following its Vienna performance on October 14th, the Philharmonia Orchestra will perform it in California on on October 17th, 18th, and 21st; Ann Arbor, MI on October 24th; Bethesda, MD October 27th; and Carnegie Hall, NY on October 29th. Learn more on the publishers’ pages here (listing the performances) and here ( with details about the work, which is dedicated to the memory of Ortiz’s friend, Mexican musician Jorge Verdín, known by his artist name Clorofila.) Ortiz is Featured Composer with The Philharmonia this season; they will give the UK premiere of her cello concerto in March!.
The organization EMPOWER: Women Changing Music are delighted to launch the second year of the OpusHER Award, an award created in partnership with ABRSM to support emerging female composers and expand the contemporary repertoire for wind instruments. “This award offers a unique opportunity for female composers aged 18 and above to create a brand-new work for the EMPOWER 2026 tour, celebrating Women’s History Month. We are particularly looking for music that draws that relates to the mission of EMPOWER.” Their mission is to promote fairness and gender equality in the music industry by spotlighting female composers and musicians. EMPOWER aims to create musical environments that celebrate women, broaden the historically male-dominated canon, and are outlets for positive change.
On Saturday October 25th, the North Corner Chamber Orchestra of Seattle, WA will open its 2025–26 season. The concert, Revolution!, will feature Florence Anna Maunders‘s Uprising and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Maunders’s Uprising is a new work by a composer who has cultivated a lush and timbrally ambitious voice in her orchestral writing that reflects her multi-layered career. Following her undergraduate degree at the Royal Northern College of Music, Maunders has enjoyed an international performing career the combined jazz piano, orchestral percussion, arranging, producing electronic music, and teaching. She returned to composition in 2018 as her artistic focus; she has recently been a doctoral fellow at Cardiff University, the Composer-in-Residence of the London Chamber Orchestra, the Composer-in-Residence of the Deal Music Festival, and has written a new commission for the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Below is her 2018 return to composition for orchestra entitled Bacchanal, performed by the Bromley Symphony Orchestra and written to celebrate their 100th anniversary.
So much to explore and discover! Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org