2010 Women in Music Festival

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2010 Concert Schedule and Repertoire
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Women in Music Festival 2010

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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 a concert of her music on Tuesday, March 23 at 8 pm in Christ Church (141 East Avenue, in front of the Midtown Parking garage).  The concert will feature choral and organ works, as well as her Quartet on Themes by Howard Hanson (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. More information at www.emmaloudiemermusic.com.

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

New this year!
Women in Music Festival goes on the road!
Noontime Concert Venues

Monday, March 22:
Main Hall, Eastman School of Music (entrance at 26 Gibbs Street)

Tuesday, March 23:
Wilmot Hall, Nazareth College :: Campus Map

Wednesday, March 24:
Miller Center Atrium, Eastman School of Music  (entrance at 25 Gibbs Street)

Thursday, March 25:
Eastman at Washington Square, First Universalist Church, corner of South Clinton and Court Streets

Friday, March 26:
Optics Performing Arts Series, Munnerlyn Atrium, Goergen Hall for BME/Optics, University of Rochester :: Campus Map

Other Guest Lectures & Concerts:

“All-Diemer Concert”
Tuesday, March 23 at 8 pm in Christ Church (141 East Avenue),
featuring the music of Eastman alumna Emma Lou Diemer. The concert will be performed by Eastman’s organ students, members of Ossia, and members of three local church choirs: Christ Church, Third Presbyterian, and Lakeside Presbyterian all directed by Stephen Kennedy.  Guest poet:  Iris Miller

Organ Master Class with Composer Emma Lou Diemer
Monday, March 22, 5:45 to 7:30 pm in Christ Church (141 East Avenue, in front of the Midtown Parking garage), featuring organ music of Eastman alumna Emma Lou Diemer, all performed by Eastman’s organ students.

Thursday, March 25 @ 4:00 pm – Ciminelli Formal Lounge
Amy Zigler, musicologist from University of Florida
Lecture on  the life and work of British composer and author Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) was a British composer, conductor, writer and suffragist. Although raised in a Victorian English family, Smyth studied music at the Leipzig Conservatory and found Germany to be her “home away from home.” Her long life was filled with vibrant friendships and collaborations, including such musical notables as Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, as well as such cultural icons as Queen Victoria and Virginia Woolf. Smyth composed over 70 works in a 50-year career and only slowed down with the onset of deafness later in life. From her early chamber works to her Concerto for Violin, Horn, and Orchestra (1928), Smyth’s music represents a cross-pollination of German Romantic style and British independence, presented by a strong-willed woman working in a man’s world. This lecture provides an overview of Smyth’s life and works, highlighting the most significant events and compositions that shaped her career, including the Sonata in A minor, Op. 7, for violin and piano, the Mass in D, her opera The Wreckers, the String Quartet in E minor, and the Concerto for Violin, Horn, and Orchestra.

Friday, March 26 @ 7:00 pm – Ciminelli Formal Lounge
Marimbist Jane Boxall returns with Eastman alumna Rose Chancler, piano, as the Ricochet Duo

An overview of the program:

Works from New York Women Composers
call for scores (premiere performances)
Elenor Sandresky ~ ‘Duo for Marimba and Piano’ (1991)
Eloise Matthies Niwa ~ ‘Miniatures’ (1945-49)
Vida Chenoweth ~ ‘Hommage a Bartok’ (1950)
Emma Lou Diemer ~ ‘Toccata’ for solo piano
Keiko Abe ~ ‘Voice of Matsuri Drums’ for solo marimba

Concert sponsored by a New York Women Composers grant

Reference Guides (Sibley Music Library)

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