Today, Friday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. In honor of female musicians around the world, we highlight ten outstanding Eastman women alumni (including one current graduate student) … bearing in mind that this alphabetical list represents only a tiny fraction of thousands of Eastman women who are changing the world of music. Congratulations to all of them!
JULIA BULLOCK ‘09E – international opera singer and recitalist, recently appeared in John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West
EMMA LOU DIEMER ‘60E – one of the United States’ most frequently-performed composers of organ and choral music
DORIOT ANTHONY DWYER ‘43E – first woman to hold a first-chair in a major US orchestra (flute in Boston Symphony, in the 1950s)
KELLY HALL TOMPKINS ‘93E – violinist; founder of NYC’s “Music Kitchen,” bringing live classical music to the homeless; Artist-in-Residence with the Cincinnati Symphony’s “Classical Roots”
TONIA KO ‘10E – award-winning composer, sound artist, and visual artist
MOLLY MURDOCK – a current Eastman graduate student who co-created MusicTheoryExamplesbyWomen.com, a website resource for theory/music teachers whose examples are all taken from female composers
NICOLE PAIEMENT ‘88E (DMA)– music director of San Francisco Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble and San Francisco’s Opera Parallele
JENNIFER PASCUAL ‘01E (DMA) – first woman to hold the position of Music Director at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral
MARIA SCHNEIDER ‘85E (MM) – Grammy-winning arranger and composer, recently commissioned by the New York Philharmonic
BARBARA B. SMITH ‘43MM – groundbreaking female ethnomusicologist known for her studies of native Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific musics