Dr. Samantha Ege, musicologist, pianist, & author
The fall concert season is in full swing!
On October 18 at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, in High Street, Oxford (UK) Samantha Ege will join the Oxford Chamber Players under the baton of Cayenne Ponchione-Bailey. She will perform as the featured soloist on Doreen Carwithen’s Concerto for Piano and Strings. The program will also include Brahms’s Tragic Overture and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2. Carwithen’s Concerto is seeing a resurgence in popularity. The premiere recording of the Concerto was released in March of this year, with Ege and the Lontano Orchestra directed by Odaline de la Martinez. The Concerto (1948) shows shows a real flair for Neo-classicism in its vigorous rhythms but is also infused with romantics lyricism. Carwithen spent her early years as a film composer, composing 30 film scores and regularly cross-pollinated her concert works with references to her film materials. (The Suffolk Suite, for example, “used melodies from music she had written for a film about East Anglia.”) Tickets for the concert can be purchased here.
Dr. Samantha Ege is a musicologist, pianist, & author, and a favorite performer-scholar of ours at WPA (she serves on our Board). Ege is best known for her award-winning work on the African American composer Florence Price and critically acclaimed recordings of underrepresented composers. Her first book, South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene was hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “a powerful corrective to the ‘Great Man’ theory of history.” Her writing about African-descended composers has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, and Prospect Magazine, and has made two documentaries on BBC Radio 3 celebrating the work of black women composers: “Florence Price’s Chicago and the Black Female Fellowship” and “Undine Smith Moore: The Dean of Black Women Composers.” She has also won several awards that distinguish her work in musicology, including the 2021 American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award and 2023 Society for American Music’s Irving Lowens Article Award. Her next album, released on Resonus Classics this November, will feature Dr. Ege as a soloist with the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Andrews in the world-premiere recording of Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s Piano Concerto.
On October 18th, Random Access Music will present “RAM performs at Martha Graham Studio Theater” at the Martha Graham Studio Theater in New York City. The program will feature the work of guest composers Victoria Bond, Stefania de Kenessey, Jane Leslie, and Linda Marcel, all members of the New York Women Composers Association, in addition to works by Beata Moon and Daniel Hass who are composer-members of Random Access Music. Moon’s “Wandering” for clarinet, cello, piano (2022) is a post-pandemic piece that evokes the feelings of changing beliefs that Moon experienced during and after the early lockdown periods. Bond’s “Bridges” for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2006/2025) is the world premiere of the quartet version of her original work for clarinet, violin, and piano—she has added cello to the 2025 version. De Kenessey’s “C-Fantasy” for clarinet and piano (2025) is having its second performance, and she calls it “smorgasbord of compositional ideas, from improvisation to familiar tonal melodies, held together by the underlying key of C.” Leslie’s “The Open Road” for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2002/2025) is also the world premiere of the quartet version, the original being for a trio of violin, cello, and piano. It takes its inspiration from a drive along a country road. Marcel’s “The Other Garden” for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2025) is the third world premiere of a quartet version of a previous piece on this program; hers was originally for string ensemble with piano, and offers a very different canvas for the piece’s balance of improvisation and structure, timbres, and layered textures. Hass’s work “Susanoo Battles the 8-Headed Serpent” features a sextet re-telling of the Japanese tale of Susanoo, the Shinto god of storms, from the 8th century and his battle with Yamata no Orochi, the legendary eight-headed serpent of the title.
Below is an excerpt from a NewMusicBox interview with composer Beata Moon from 2013, where she talks about her compositional process and her willingness to break conventional boundaries between compositional styles.
On October 19th, the Black Orchestral Network (BON) will hold its third annual summit in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be hosted by the Atlanta Music Project from 10AM – 5PM EDT at their premises on Dill Street in SW Atlanta. The Summit is a free one-day convention for those committed to building equity in classical music. This event invites Black musicians, cultural organizers, and equity-driven allies to examine the present state of orchestral music and imagine a future where it is more equitable. They will be challenging outdated systems and affirming the work that has already been done as they build toward a bright future for Black musicians in orchestral spaces. The Summit will feature panel discussions on creating black-centered orchestras, orchestras at HBCUs, what inclusion looks like for black musicians, the stories of both professional and collegiate black orchestral musicians, and building youth training programs that support young black orchestral musicianship, as well as masterclasses featuring students from the AMP, from orchestras at HBCUs, from Primarily Black Institutions (PBIs), and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Talent Development Program. It is so fitting that the Summit should be held at the AMP—a thriving youth music center of Atlanta.
Below is a 2023 video entitled “A Sage Look at the Atlanta Music Project” by Crystal Jin Kim. It features the performance and interviews of Sage May, then an 11th grade student and member of the AMP. Her experience is one example of the kinds of opportunities the BON hopes to create for young black musicians.
On October 3rd the Resonance Project of NE Ohio presented “A Circle of her Own,” showcasing baroque ensemble CLE Concierto. The central work of the concert was the modern premiere of Marianna Martines’s recently-discovered Keyboard Concerto in E major and La Tempesta. Also on the program were works by Mozart, Haydn, and CPE Bach—composers who would have been regular attendees at Martines’ home salons.
On October 3rd, the Creative Women Improvising Composers Orchestra (CWICO) performed its debut concert at The Lost Church of San Francisco. The program featured compositions by each of the members—Rika Ellis, Rebecca Hass, Beryl Lee Heuermann, Joyce Todd McBride, and Lillian Yee—as well as improvised pieces. The group formed earlier this year, and meets to workshop and perform each other’s work as well as improvise and create space for women composers to connect and work together. Their members draw from backgrounds in jazz, classical, and choral traditions, as well as world and folk influences, experimental and electro-acoustic music, theatre, dance, and sound design.
The French Association for Orchestras (AFO) has developed a composition competition exclusively for women composers. Now in its second year, the Unanimes! European Composition Competition, is calling for women composer candidates from the EU in chamber orchestra and symphonic orchestra categories. The jury will select up to three candidates in each category based on their applications. Each selected composer will then have until June 22, 2026 to write a new work lasting 7–8 minutes.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org