Marin Alsop and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra have recently enjoyed a successful eleven-city tour of Japan. In addition to classics by Beethoven and Mozart, their program included Jessie Montgomery’s Strum—a work that might be familiar to WPA readers, as it’s been featured in the News Digest in July. Her work Soul Force appeared on the New York Youth Symphony’s Grammy award-winning album in 2023.
Below is Montgomery’s Soul Force, performed by Mei-Ann Chen and the Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) in 2022.
Album cover, Alice O’Donovan, 2024
On October 1, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan announced that she will bring her album All My Friends to concert and symphony halls this season. The performances will include her new song cycle commemorating women’s voting rights in the United States. O’Donovan’s project was originally planned for 2020 to coincide with the centenary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, but production and performances were delayed by COVID-19. Both large and small-scale performances are planned for the tour to promote the album; at the Wallis Performing Arts Center (Beverly Hills) and the Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix, AZ) O’Donovan will appear with Hawktail; she will also appear with the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (La Jolla, CA), Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra (Orlando, FL), the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (Newport News, Virginia), and the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, DC).
Credit: https://www.bso.org/
On October 4 the Eureka Symphony Orchestra (Eureka, CA) opened its 2024/25 season with a concert titled Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman under the baton of Music Director Carol Jacobsen. The concert featured the music of composers Joan Tower and Emilie Mayer and Grammy-nominated piano soloist Kara Huber. Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Women No. 6—a favorite work of orchestras interested in promoting women composers—opened the program, and Mayer’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor concluded it. Mayer was a 19th century German composer whose work is currently enjoying re-discovery. Though Huber was playing a Mozart concerto on this particular concert (No. 20 in D minor, K 466), she and Tower have a longstanding professional relationship: over the years Tower has been a consistent supporter of Huber’s performing efforts, and Huber has recorded all of Tower’s solo piano compositions.
Below is Huber presenting the complete solo piano works by Joan Tower, with the composer. (Sixth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (2016) No Longer Very Clear (1994-2000) Steps (2011) Love Letter (2022) and Ivory and Ebony (2009)). The album is available from Sacred Black Records.
On October 10, Jeri Lynne Johnson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic will present On Dissonance (An Evening of Classical, Symphonic, and Opera Works), curated by Solange Knowles for Saint Heron. The performance will feature music by black women composers, including Knowles’ “Not Necessarily in Arms Reach,” Patrice Rushen‘s Sinfonia, and three pieces by Julia Perry: her Short Piece for Orchestra, Homunculus C.F., and Stabat Mater.
Below is a recording of Perry’s Homunculus, recorded by members of the Cincinnati Symphony in 2024.
On October 25 Mei-Ann Chen will conduct the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra at Neidorff-Karpati Hall in New York. The concert is free and open to the public. The concert will include Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 6, and Elsa Barraine’s Symphony No. 2 among its presented works.
Below is Tower’s Fanfare No. 6, played by the Baltimore Symphony in 2016.
And here is Elsa Barraine’s Symphony No. 2 with Cristian Măcelaru leading the L’Orchestre National de France
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