Women in Music Blog

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1934, Deon Nielsen was living at Fort Clayton in the Panama Canal Zone around 1946, when her father was stationed there. She was already a pianist and, at age 12, had her first paying job as a ballet school accompanist. She and her family regularly attended concerts at the National Theater. At one, she heard pianist Arthur Rubinstein , and at another, pianist Gyorgy Sandor . "I even slipped backstage during intermission for their autographs," she remembers. Those great pianists inspired her to become a concert pianist herself. Nearly 60 years later, in June 2005 , Deon returned to Panama with her son, Dr. Berkeley Price, a clarinetist--this time to give a concert. "Returning to the site of my early ambition now completes a circle," she told the audience. Ironically, Gyorgy Sandor died later that year. Deon attended high school in San Francisco, and took lessons from C.W. Reid at the San Francisco Academy of Music. She accompa...

She was born Marian Griswold Nevins on November 22, 1857, the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music.   Music was her gift.   Like many young women of her time and station, she traveled abroad to study piano.   In Frankfurt, Germany, she met a brilliant young American three years her junior, Edward MacDowell.   She became his student.   Love and marriage followed.   And Marian gave up any hope of a career in music to support her husband in his fledgling career as a composer.   In all likelihood, Marian MacDowell would have remained in the shadow of her celebrated husband.   But in 1905, Edward MacDowell fell ill, stricken with a debilitating nervous disease.   For some time the couple had considered how they could help the cause of young artists in America.   They had talked of turning their farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, into a working retreat, a woodland sanctuary that offered inspiration and the p...

I am writing a biography about composer, pianist, and pedagogue Louise Talma. The working title of this biography is “I am NOT a Woman Composer!” The Life and Music of Louise Talma (1906-1996) . I have an advance contract with the University of Illinois Press. Three more chapters, three more years (yes, my 12-month, full-time job takes lots of time). But now that I am about halfway through the book, the momentum is helping. Right now, I am writing Chapter IV which is built around the correspondence between Talma and Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder. Together they wrote a three-act grand opera, The Alcestiad . It was premiered in Germany in 1962 to twenty minutes of audience cheers, but has never been performed since or in the original language. Talma declared it "too expensive." I am writing this book because when I ask people how many twentieth century female composers they can name, I hear crickets. Talma is part of the fabric of twentieth century art musi...

The International Alliance of Women in Music won the Champion of New Music Award!  About the Champion of New Music Award The Champion of New Music Award was established by the American Composers Forum (ACF) in 2005 as a national mark of recognition to honor individuals and ensembles that have made a significant and sustained contribution over time to the work and livelihoods of contemporary composers. It is made each year to individuals and/or organizations across a broad range of disciplines including, but not limited to, performance, commissioning, education, recording, and/or funding. Awardees are nominated and selected by the American Composers Forum Board of Directors. The award to the  International Alliance for Women in Music  was given at the IAWM Annual Concert on Saturday, October, 28, 2017 at the University of Kansas. YEAH!!  Let's celebrate a fellow group of Women interested in Music! for more information see: https://composersforum.org/about/c...

Then you need to know about THIS opportunity for career development! Competition Overview National Sawdust (NS), with generous support from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, is offering a $7,000 prize to two emerging female composers through its inaugural Hildegard Competition. In addition to the cash prize, winners will receive coaching from two critically acclaimed composers: NS Artistic Director Paola Prestini and NS Curator Angélica Negrón. Following this coaching, the works will be performed live and recorded in National Sawdust’s state of the art venue by Lidiya Yankovskya and the Refugee Orchestra at a public performance in Summer 2018. https://nationalsawdust.org/hildegard/

You need to know about this competition! Opera Grants for Female Composers Supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Opera Grants for Female Composers provide support for the development of new operas by women, both directly to individual composers and to OPERA America Professional Company Members, advancing the important objective of increasing diversity across the field.   https://operaamerica.org/content/about/grants.aspx?utm_source=OPERA+America+News&utm_campaign=414973a437-20171017_OGFC_Discovery&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a71a99cf69-414973a437-35621629#discovery

Susanna Mälkki brings more news to the Los Angeles Philharmonic http://beta.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-malkki-la-phil-review-20171030-story.html

Recently I had the great pleasure to attend the joint meeting of the Greater New York Chapter of the Music Library Association and the Atlantic States Chapter of the Music Library Association which was held at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey October 13-14, 2017.  I was completely suprised to find out about a libguide everyone who is interested in Women in Music and libraries should know about!  I wasn't expecting my interest in Women in Music to intersect with this random conference meeting in quite such a sublime fashion!  Direct your attention, please, to an excellent resource about women in music and the operas they composed in a libguide called " In Her Own Hand: Operas Composed by Women 1625 to 1913." http://lisdemo.libguides.com/c.php?g=411045&p=2801638

Here in the Women in Music Interest Group we often feature women composers or women conductors and while there are a few articles about pop music that I've linked to here on our blog spot, we rarely hear about Jazz musicians.  This article from a blog written by Lauren Sevian from WBGO.org really brings up some interesting points about women working in jazz in today's society.  I hope you all find it as compelling as I did. http://wbgo.org/post/sexism-jazz-conservatory-club-one-saxophonist-shares-her-story#stream/0

Here's a fantastic blog entry by Ella Rose Chary about the gender divide in Musical Theater Writing.  Please read it, I think you'll all find it to be an excellent article about the state of women in musical theater! http://howlround.com/women-making-musical-theatre-institutions-hold-the-power-to-effect-change

The New York Times author Wesley Morris wrote this article all about the hypothetical need for us to establish a parallel pop music cannon for women and I thought putting it here might give us all the opportunity to discuss our impressions about the article.  Do we feel it is needed, if so...who should be on it?  Let's put our minds together and discuss the issue! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/magazine/should-women-make-their-own-pop-music-canon.html

Recently a friend of mine alerted me to a song cycle called Baby Book. Natasha Lynn Foley and Bethany Cothern are musicians recording Lauren Spavelko's song cycle called Baby Book. When I went to go try to purchase the sheet music for the song cycle, I was directed to this Indiegogo page.  I am putting a link to it here mostly because they mention that they are women musicians interested in producing music about women for women and I think that meshes well with our interest group and that perhaps some libraries might want to know about this work. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/baby-book-feminism#/

http://www.muw.edu/musicbywomen/submissions

In 1903, Dr. Winthrop Sterling, Dean of the Metropolitan College of Music, Elocution and Dramatic Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, had a dream that women music students should have an organization that would bring them together, providing a sense of well-being and guidance. He enlisted the help of his 19-year-old assistant and fellow faculty member, Elizabeth Mathias (later Elizabeth Mathias Fuqua) to establish such an organization. Image courtesy of the Mu Phi Epsilon 1904 Year-Book   Mu Phi Epsilon was to be chartered as a National Music Sorority, the first of its kind in the United States, working for a stronger foothold in the musical world where there could be equal opportunities for both sexes. Thus, the Mu Phi Epsilon Alpha Chapter held its first meeting with thirteen young women on that fateful November 13, 1903 (yes, it was a Friday!). The establishment of the Beta Chapter at the New England Conservatory in Boston soon followed, November 30, 1903.   ...