A fascinating range of news and events this week!
Lara St. John, violinist, activist, and documentarian
Lately, Lara St. John’s documentary Dear Lara has been enjoying deserved recognition and screenings on the US east coast. It will celebrate its theatrical opening in New York City on January 15, 2027 at the New Plaza Cinema, and additional screenings will follow—these are only the beginning of the film’s publicly available theatrical performances. There will also be continued opportunities to see the film at various festivals throughout autumn. This week, screenings are happening in the following cities:
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- September 27 – Lady Filmmakers Festival – Fine Arts Theater (Beverly Hills, CA); Imagine This Women’s International Film Festival – Regal Union Square 9 (New York, NY)
- October 2 – Syracuse International Film Festival (Cazenovia / Syracuse, NY) Syracuse tickets are available here.
- October 5 – Free Library of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA); presented in partnership with Philadelphia Musicians Union Local 77-274 AFM. 4:00 PM screening tickets are available here; 6:30 PM screening tickets are available here. More festival selections, screenings, and partnerships are forthcoming.
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The application period for the 2027 LunArt Festival is open, and their Call for Scores is live. Applicants have until October 18th to submit their materials. The Call for Scores is open to women composers of all ages and nationalities: cisgender and transgender women, composers at any stage of their careers, and to composer-performers as well as to composers for outside ensembles. Submission requirements are available here through LunArt’s website. At WPA we look forward to the results of this festival every year—there are always incredible new pieces to listen to!
On October 23, 25, and 28 the Lyric Opera of Chicago will perform Rhiannon Giddens’ & Michael Abels’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar. This is a limited run of the opera that Giddens and Abels composed jointly and Giddens wrote the libretto. The opera won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and has been performed at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2022 (its world premiere); by the Los Angeles Opera in October 2022; at Carolina Performing Arts in February 2023; and the Boston Lyric Opera in May 2023. Giddens based her libretto on A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar ibn Said (1831), the only known memoir written in Arabic by a slave in the United States—it is also one of the few extant first-person written accounts of an enslaved person in the US at the time.
From Lyric Opera: “The plot of Omar traces the journey of its titular character from his early life in Futa Toro (present-day Senegal) through his capture, enslavement, and eventual life in North Carolina. The opera opens with Omar as a respected Islamic scholar, living a life of intellectual and spiritual fulfillment. This tranquility is shattered when he is captured and forcibly transported across the Atlantic. In America, Omar is sold into slavery and struggles to reconcile his faith and identity with the brutal realities of his new existence.”
Tania León, composer
On September 25–29, Tania León’s Imágenes mestízas has its world premiere performed by the New York Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel at the Wu Tai Theater, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.
León, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, was the first Latin American woman to win the prize for Music in 2021. In 2022, she was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime artistic achievements. She is a highly decorated and sought-after composer, educator and director whose awards just keep coming in: she has recently been nominated for two 2026 Latin GRAMMY Awards—Best Classical Composition for Raíces (Origins), performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Edward Gardner, and Best Classical Album for Tania León: Horizons, Raíces (Origins), Stride, Pasajes, recorded live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Edward Gardner, Karina Canellakis, and Dima Slobodeniouk.
On October 1, Thea Musgrave’s Song of the Enchanter (1990) will be featured on a program by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kristian Sallinen. The program is inspired by the Finnish national epic The Kalevala, and will feature other works by Madetoja and Sibelius. Musgrave wrote Song of the Enchanter on a commission from the Helskini Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Sibelius’s birth.
Below is a recording of Musgrave’s work, performed by the commissioning Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Sergiu Comissiona.
Iris Greep — Composer and Pianist. We bet that name is unfamiliar to you, as it was to us! It is always exciting that historic women composers and their music continue to be discovered or re-discovered. British composer Iris Greep (1914-1985) is better known as Iris du Pré, mother of cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Publisher and archivist Tobias Broeker has announced that he has obtained the bulk of Greep’s musical legacy, and plans to make it available. Greep studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and had notable successes both before and after her marriage. She continued to use her unmarried name professionally after her marriage. Broeker lists her output, which includes an orchestral tone poem “Stonehenge” and music for ballet, as well as a wide range of chamber works, music for solo piano, and pedagogical works.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org, or use our handy contact form.