Events in several locations around the Rochester area will give local audiences more opportunities to attend and enjoy the activities presented during the Eastman School of Music’s sixth annual Women in Music Festival.
Recitals featuring musicians from the Eastman School and Nazareth College, guest artists, lectures, and poetry readings will spotlight the many achievements and contributions of women in all aspects of music, from performance to scholarship.
This year’s festival runs from Monday, March 22, through Friday, March 26, with events scheduled at the Eastman School, Nazareth College, University of Rochester’s River Campus, Christ Church, and First Universalist Church.
“I am very proud of the fact that the Women in Music Festival has become a tradition at Eastman,” said Sylvie Beaudette, founding director of the festival and an assistant professor of chamber music and accompanying at the Eastman School. She is coordinating the 2010 Women in Music Festival with doctoral student and pianist Liu Liu. “Most of the free performances are held in public spaces, which allows people to attend as much or as little as they can. March is a busy month for everyone but we hope that the festival will make a wonderful finale to Women’s History Month!”
Emma Lou Diemer, who received her Ph.D. at the Eastman School in 1960, will be this year’s composer-in-residence. Her music has been published since 1957 and includes major works in many genres: symphonic, chamber, keyboard, choral, vocal, and electronic. She has received an ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) award annually since 1962 for performances and publications. She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Young Composers Grant, an NEA fellowship, a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the American Guilds of Organists Composer of the Year award, and other honors.
Diemer’s work will be featured several times throughout the Women in Music Festival, including a concert devoted to her works at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, in Christ Church, which will feature the premiere of Quartet on Themes by Howard Hanson. Hanson, the legendary director of the Eastman School for 40 years, taught Diemer while she was working on her doctoral degree at Eastman. Several pieces for organ, performed by Eastman organists, and two choral works sung by a combination of three local church choirs will be heard as well.
The festival also features five noontime concerts of works written by women in a broad range of musical styles. Local woman poets will read from their works at each of the noontime and all-Diemer concerts. Scheduled to appear are poets Tricia Asklar, Pia Liptak, Iris Miller, Kathleen Nicastro, Lori Nolasco, and Wanda Schubmehl.
Venues for the noontime concerts include the Eastman School on March 22; Wilmot Hall at Nazareth College on March 23; the Miller Center Atrium at the Eastman School on March 24; First Universalist Church on March 25; and the Munnerlyn Atrium in Robert B. Goergen Hall on the University of Rochester’s River Campus on March 26.
Additional activities include a lecture on the musical life of British composer, conductor, writer, and suffragist Dame Ethel Smyth at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 25, and a recital by the Ricochet Duo – marimbist Jane Boxall and pianist Rose Chancler – at 7 p.m. Friday, March 26. Both events take place in Ciminelli Formal Lounge in Eastman Commons.
All of the Women in Music Festival events are free and open to the public. A complete schedule can be found online at https://www.esm.rochester.edu/wmf/ .
The 2010 Women in Music Festival is sponsored by The Hanson Institute for American Music at the Eastman School; the Office of the Dean of the Eastman School of Music; the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender & Women’s Studies in the College of the University of Rochester; the departments of Chamber Music, Composition, Piano, and Strings at the Eastman School; and the School’s All-Events Committee.
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