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Women in Music Festival 2010

The Women in Music Festival is proud to welcome back alumna composer Emma Lou Diemer (Composition student 1945-46; PhD 1960).  She will be in Rochester for a three-day residency, March 22-24, 2010, which will culminate in an “All-Diemer Concert” on Tuesday, March 23.  The concert will feature choral and organ works, as well as her “Romantic Quartet” (in honor of Howard Hanson) to be premiered by Ossia members.

Emma Lou Diemer’s degrees in composition are from the Yale School of Music (BM, MM) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.), with further study of composition and piano under a Fulbright Scholarship in Belgium and composition study at the Berkshire Music Center (two summers). Her music has been published since 1957 and includes major works in many genres: symphonic, chamber, keyboard, choral, vocal, electronic. She has received an ASCAP award annually since 1962 for performances and publications. Her 1991 piano concerto received a Kennedy Center Friedheim award, as did her 1989 string quartet. She was composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony 1990-92. Recordings include the piano concerto (MMC Recordings--Czech Radio Symphony), an organ concerto (Albany Records--Czech National Symphony), Santa Barbara Overture (MMC Recordings--London Symphony), marimba concerto (Slovak Radio Symphony), Suite of Homages (CRS--Halle State Philharmonic Orchestra), Poem of Remembrance for clarinet and chamber orchestra (CRS--St. Petersburg Symphony), and various chamber, choral, and vocal works. Diemer is a keyboard performer, with recent appearances as pianist (the latest in January, 2009, in Santa Barbara) and as organist in concerts of her own works (Washington National Cathedral, Grace Cathedral and St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, Our Lady of the Angeles Cathedral in Los Angeles, and others). A bio-biography of Diemer by Ellen Schlegel is published by Greenwood Press. A website for Diemer is emmaloudiemermusic.com.

Emma Lou Diemer, 1949

Please visit the Women in Music Festival’s website again on October 31, 2009 for more details about Emma Lou Diemer’s residency and again in March 2010 for the full festival program details.

Dr. Sylvie Beaudette, Women in Music Festival Director
Sponsored by the Eastman School of Music