News to start your week!
The Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership (WML) program has announced two graduations and three new members, each with a constellation of musical achievements and awards to her name. Conductors Maria Fuller and Naomi Woo, members of the second cohort of conductors, have completed the program. Fuller was recently appointed Assistant Conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège in Belgium, a position she will begin in the 25/26 season. Woo is completing her tenure as Music Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada with an East-to-West Canadian tour, and will continue in her roles as Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Artistic Partner with the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal). The newest member, Eve Legault, joins Monica Chen and Léa Moisan-Perrier (both continuing in the third-year cohort). Two new Associate Conductors are also set to join the program for the 2025/26 season: Véronique Lussier and Serena Reuten. These five women and their cohort peers are all fantastic examples of the kind of artistry that is possible when we support women’s conducting ambitions!
Here is a collection of excerpts from Tapestry Opera’s WML program materials featuring recent women candidates, recorded April 2025.
On August 1 the Instituto Cervantes Manchester in collaboration with The Iberian and Latin American Music Society will present a lunchtime concert at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. The recital will feature the songs and untold stories of eighteen Latina women composers representing music from three centuries, performed by soprano Lorena Paz Nieto and pianist Helen Glaisher-Hernández. The full program is available from Bridgewater Hall, but it will include music by Matilde Salvador, Teresa Carreño, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Gisela Hernández, and María Rodrigo.
Shirley Walker (1945 – 2006) film composer and conductor
On August 12 the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will perform a lunchtime concert featuring music by women composers that mixes ideas and inspiration from classical and popular music. On the classical side of the program will be Anoesjcka DeLorenzo‘s Suite and Shirley Walker‘s, Batman Suite in addition to “other female composers” (not listed). DeLorenzo describes herself as “an intuitive composer of cinematic storytelling and orchestral music,” and a composer who “composes by feeling and not by rule,” building her compositions from moments of emotional intensity. Her self-titled album is available via most major streaming services. In an intentional contrast to DeLorenzo’s musical storytelling, which has sometimes revealed itself over time, Shirley Walker’s Batman Suite has a clear cast of characters and narrative. It is one of several pieces in her output that reflect her work with DC superheroes, including the Flash, Batman the Animated series, and Superman. Her exciting trial-by-score-rescue in Los Angeles came in 1979 when she overhauled the score for The Black Stallion, saving it from disaster. Until her death in 2006 she was a Hollywood institution, working with household names like Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. In 2014 ASCAP created an award in her honor to recognize achievements toward diversity in film and television music.
Jessie Montgomery, composer
Photo Credit: Jiyang Chen
Jessie Montgomery will be a featured artist and composer-in-residence at the La Jolla Music Society’s annual SummerFest, which runs from July 28 – August 9. On August 7 she will be the featured artist in the SummerFest’s Takeover @ The Jai—a small venue near the Baker-Baum Concert Hall. She will present her own work in collaboration with Noah Bendix-Balgley (violin), Inon Barnatan (piano), and members of the Hesper Quartet (Valerie Kim & Yejin Yoon, violins; Sohui Yun, viola; and Connor Kim, cello). Her own works Peace (2020), Musings/Duo Medley (2023, with Bartók), and Strum (2006, rev. 2012) will take center stage, supported by Debussy’s Beau soir and Dvóràk’s “American” Quartet (No. 12, Op. 96). The two pieces that are not her own represent composers and styles that been influential to her in her work so far. Montgomery completed her residency as the Chicago Symphony’s Mead Composer in Residence in 2024, and is Performance Today’s chosen Classical Woman of the Year for 2025. In addition to being a Grammy Award-winning composer, she is also a violinist and concert curator; she will put all her skills to use at various times during the festival. She has rightly collected much praise for her work in music, which explores the boundaries of genre, vernacular music, and socially conscious themes.
Below is a recording of one of Montgomery’s featured works, Strum for string quartet, performed by the Borromeo Quartet at the 2021 Heifetz Festival of Concerts.
On August 17th the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will perform Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark (2015) at the Ravinia Festival. The piece was the winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Elaine Lebenbom Prize for a commissioned work—an award instituted in 2006 and granted annually to support new orchestral works by living women composers of any age or nationality. She writes that she thinks of the music “as the optimism of a very young person.” Though the opening may have a hint of doubt, its big moments hear horns and trombones doing what they do best: making bold, hopeful statements. The piece isn’t all bluster and optimism, however. Secondary themes have time to develop over the course of the piece, and by the end it is much more complex than its opening might suggest. That kind of complexity will also serve her well in her upcoming opera Hildegarde, based on the life of Hildegard of Bingen.
Here is a recording of Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark, performed by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music orchestra in 2021 conducted by Edwin Outwater.
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org