2009 Women in Music Festival

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Women in Music Festival 2009

The Eastman School of Music will produce its fifth annual Women in Music Festival (WMF) from March 23-27, 2009.  The festival is a celebration of women involved in all aspects of music, including composition, performance, teaching, scholarship, and administration.  Five noontime concerts featuring works written by women composers will form the cornerstone of this celebration.  Classical, jazz, world, popular, multimedia, and experimental music are but a few of the styles and genres represented in these diverse programs.  The public is invited to attend these free performances, which will take place in public spaces.

American composer Judith Lang Zaimont is the Festival’s 2009 Composer-in-Residence. Her new work, commissioned by Eastman’s Hanson Institute for American Music, is entitled Housewife and is based upon a text by local poet Claudia Stanek.  Housewife was written for the Eastman Women’s Chorus and is part of an ongoing project called Life Cycle.  The Eastman Women’s Chorus will give Housewife its premiere on Wednesday, March 25, during an all-Zaimont concert.  On Sunday, March 22, the EWC will perform excerpts from Life Cycle at a concert of the Society for New Music in Syracuse.  Student composers and performers will have the opportunity to work with Zaimont during master classes and presentations, all free and open to the public.

Also featured on this year’s program are several guest artists including:

• Eastman alumna Jennifer Oh-Brown and her trio, who will perform a recital entitled On the Wisdom of Women, at the Interfaith Chapel (Friday, March 27, 7pm, Interfaith Chapel on the River Campus).
• Mixed-media artist Kathleen Nicastro and pianist Kevin Nitsch will present a program/exhibit called Labyrinth of Sound and Light Water’s Edge: 200 Years of Women Composers, in which audience members are invited to draw while they listen to poetry and music (Thursday, March 26, 3:30pm, The Sproul Atrium in Miller Center, 25 Gibbs St.).

Additional performers include faculty artists and students of the Eastman School of Music.

• WHAT: Fifth Annual Women in Music Festival
• WHEN:
  March 23-27, 2009
  Concerts begin at noon unless specified otherwise
• WHERE: Eastman School of Music — various venues
• ADMISSION: Free
• INFO:
  Dr. Sylvie Beaudette: sbeaudette@esm.rochester.edu
  Lisa Raposa: lmraposa@yahoo.com