The London Oriana Choir, Edinburgh Singers, Southern Spirit Singers, and Archer Academy will perform music by women composers, including new commission by Hannah Kendall. The programme looks really great, get to this if you can.
Mia Makaroff: Butterfly
Kate Rusby: Underneath the stars arr. Jim Clements
Sarah Quartet: Swept away
Eleanor Daley: Set me as a seal
Aileen Sweeney: We will no longer sing into the silence
The Musicians' Union responds, noting the need to address wider problems than just the festivals themselves, and the damage caused to the industry by this lack of representation.
JAM’s Masterclass Series 2022 is a composition course in choral writing, aimed at emerging UK-based composers. It is free and open to all UK-based composers aged 18+.
Composers are asked to submit a sketch by Friday 20th May 2022. These should be
· A maximum of 50 bars and
· written for SATB to SSAATTBB choir, a cappella.
· All texts must be in the public domain.
· Composers who submit must be able to attend the workshop in person to participate
On 9th July, a maximum of six composers, who have submitted sketches, will be offered the chance to take part in a choral workshop with VOCES8 and composer Paul Mealor. The workshop will take place at St Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent.
“Nurturing emerging composers is extremely important to me. JAM’s Masterclass Series does exactly this.” Paul Mealor, composer and JAM President.
The six composers who have participated in the workshop will then be asked to submit their completed pieces to JAM by 2nd September.
All six pieces will be performed by the VOCES8 Foundation in a recorded, public concert at St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street in October. At the end of this performance one of the composers will be awarded the President's Commission of £500. The commission will be premiered at JAM's 'Music of Our Time' concert in March 2023.
Two premieres, a newly commissioned brass quintet by Janet Wheeler, and The
Hand that Made Us Is Divine by Kathryn
Rose, feature in this concert that opens JAM's 2022 season, its first Music of Our Time concert since March 2019.
The full programme is
The
Lord is my Lightby William
Harmer
Clarion
Song (Op59) by Christopher
Best
In
Drifts of Sleep by Richard
Peat
The
Hand that Made Us Is Divine by Kathryn
Rose
Carol
of the Passion by Philip
Lancaster
New
Commission(for brass quintet) by Janet
Wheeler
Between
the Stormclouds and the Sea by Jack
Oades (with
text by Grahame Davies)
The
Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge
Onyx
Brass | Simon Hogan, organ | Mark Le Brocq, tenor
|Grahame Davies, narrator
Women in Music would like to congratulate composer and pianist Dr Tanya Ekanayaka and all those involved in the release of this marvellous collection.
Dr Tanya Ekanayaka - by Nadine Ishaq
Tanya writes
It gives
me great pleasure to share with you, news of a unique release in celebration of
International Women’s Day 2022 on 8th March.
A
limited-edition 10-CD boxset titled, 3 CENTURIES OF FEMALE COMPOSERS
containing works for solo piano by some of the greatest female piano composers
through history is being released worldwide today (4th March). Many of you will
likely recognise many of the composers and some of the music in this set can be
accessed entirely free!
I’m deeply
honoured that one of the CDs, (CD 9), comprises my own compositions for solo
piano mostly composed during lockdown in 2020, and performed by me. Not
least because of the beautiful context am I touched by this inclusion, but also
because a core aspect of my creative practice as a South Asian woman
composer-pianist with a very multicultural lived musical background,
focuses on broadening the musical imprint of the piano across cultures and
‘spaces’ not traditionally associated with the pianistic canon.
The
release note published by Naxos Records on their official web-page dedicated to
the release and full list of composers featured are as follows:
“Ranging
from the 18th century to the music of our time, this collection of critically
acclaimed recordings explores the significant contribution to solo piano
repertoire made by a wide variety of women composers. These rare and important
pieces include the works of the celebrated pianist Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy
and of Hélène de Montgeroult, whose sonatas are distinctive additions to the
Classical and early Romantic periods. Maria Szymanowska’s deft dances contrast
with the fearsome demands of Teresa Carreño, herself a great virtuoso.
Vítězslava Kaprálová was the most important female Czech composer of the 20th
century, while Agathe Backer Grøndahl was one of Norway’s most respected
composer-pianists. Tanya Ekanayaka continues the lineage in her own diverse and
hybrid pieces.” – NAXOS RECORDS
BBC Radio 3 is playing music written by women all day in celebration of International Women's Day. Composers include:
Composer of the week Henriette Bosmans.
Lunchtime concert by the BBC Singers and organist Anna Lapwood with music by Kristina Arakelyan, June Nixon, Kerensa Briggs, Sarah MacDonald, Melissa Dunphy, Cecilia McDowall, Judith Bingham and Ghislaine Reece-Trapp.
Afternoon concert including music by Joan Tower, Francesca Caccini, Lotta Wennäkoski, Isabella Leonarda, Erika Fox, Dora Pejacevic, Thea Musgrave, Dora Pejačević, and Elfrida Andrée.
In tune mixtape includes works by Doreen Carwithen, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Errollyn Wallen, Clara Schumann and Laura Mvula.
Radio 3 in concert gives music by Maddalena Casulana and Barbara Strozzi.
Well done radio 3, and we would like more of this every day.
For International Women's Day, electric voice theatre are presenting this online concert of vocal music that celebrates women in the ambit of the nineteenth century astronomer and mathematician Mary Somerville.
Works to be performed include
Cheryl Frances-Hoad Something More Than Mortal (Words by Ada Lovelace)
Lynne Plowman Seven Dark Lines
Eliza Flower (1803 – 1846) Now Pray We for our Country and Rebecca’s Hymn
Isabella Scott Gibson (1786–1838) Row Gondolier and Lochnagar
Helen Blackwood, Lady Dufferin (1807 – 1867) The Charming Woman
This new Routledge Handbook, which arose from the papers given at the First International Conference on Women's Work in Music, held at Bangor University in 2017, and edited by Rhiannon Mathias, is an important new collection of diverse research and practitioner reporting in this field. Routledge describe it as 'a key reference work for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in music and gender'. It is available as an ebook as well as a hardback volume.
Transculturalvisions in partnership with Griots Arts and Outerglobe presents Stranger Fruit: Contemporary reflections on the lives of Jazz and Blues women and their legacies, a participatory zoom programme with fortnightly sessions between February 26th and April 9th 2022. Arts advocates Debbie Golt and Marva Jackson Lord will host. Four contemporary women musicians of profile choose a fellow artist who inspires them and will share how their own music and practice is impacted by their chosen person. Each session will feature illustrated interviews with Sharron Macloed (voice/flute), Charlotte Keeffe (trumpet), RENU (percussion) and Roella Oloru (multi-instrumentalist) in turn. They will play their own music live inviting the others and eventually audience members to join in open ended improvisations together in real time on zoom. Visual artist Clare Marshall will paint inspired by the music and discussions during the zoom. The sessions will be free and participants will be able to register via a website - www.strangerfruit.net
Bilkis Malek, Director of Transculturalvisions said ‘Women are central to the origins and evolution of Jazz and Blues and have inspired some of the most famous musicians and their contributions are not always well known. I think of Ma Rainey whose gravelly vocals inspired Louis Armstrong, Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt and Victoria Spivey who nurtured the talent of Bob Dylan. There is also Mama Ray Thornton who originally recorded Hound Dog which was one of Elvis Presley’s biggest hits. Stranger Fruit picks up on this theme with our four invited musicians who look at artists who they have been inspired by and who in turn may not be so well known or understood.”
As might be assumed, the title Stranger Fruit is indeed inspired by “Strange Fruit” originally sung by Billie Holiday, written by Abel Meeropol. The song is recognised as a protest against the lynching of black Americans and identifies the victims with the fruit of trees. The central invitation of the series is to imagine what would it be like if strangers were seen as a product of a society, or community’s own making, voices highlighting our fault lines and how we might imagine things differently. Taking this as a theme the series also aims to represent women as being in charge of their destinies and not victims as the Blues and Jazz women are so often portrayed when they do get a mention. In fact women have been central to the origins and evolution of jazz and blues and advocates of female empowerment through independence, sassiness and sexual freedom. Through the series as each musician reflects on the how their chosen artist inspires them and how their music, innovation and style has made a difference to their own approaches and development, the aim is to transform perceptions of women’s impact on contemporary music and culture. Perhaps a more liberating view of identity and understanding of differences will emerge.
