In celebration of Women's History Month, we are pleased to spotlight some of the remarkable women whose compositions we count among our favorites, including several you might have heard Pacific Chorale perform recently or will hear in upcoming concerts... as well as some about whom we are eager to learn more!
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
Hildegard of Bingen was a saint, composer and poet. But it's only recently that her songs, writings and remarkable life and visions have been rediscovered. She was born over 900 years ago and for most of her 80-plus years was shut away in an obscure hilltop monastery in the Rhineland. This remarkable woman had left behind a treasure-trove of illuminated manuscripts, scholarly writings and songs written for her nuns to sing at their devotions. Interest in Hildegard started to grow around the 800th anniversary of her death in 1979, when Philip Pickett and his New London Consort gave possibly the first English performances of four of Hildegard’s songs. And, in 1983, the success of A Feather On The Breath Of God, an album of her music, piqued people’s curiosity about the author of these sensual, vivid, lyrical songs. Accounts written in Hildegard’s lifetime and just after describe an extraordinarily accomplished woman: a visionary, a prophet (she was known as “The Sibyl Of The Rhine”), a pioneer who wrote practical books on biology, botany, medicine, theology and the arts. Though she was known throughout medieval Europe as a stateswoman and a seer, there is no evidence that her music was ever heard outside her own convent. Ironically, of all her achievements, it is her compositions that have stood the test of time.
(Biography adapted from ClassicFM.com)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
O viridissima Virga (2022); O ignee Spiritus (2019)
Maddalena Casulana (c. 1544-c. 1590)
Maddalena Casulana was an Italian composer, lutenist and singer of the late Renaissance. Her First Book of Madrigals (1568) is the first known printed, published work by a woman in western music history. The dedication to her patron, Isabella de' Medici, in her first book of madrigals shows her feeling about being a female composer at a time when such a thing was rare: "[I] want to show the world, as much as I can in this profession of music, the vain error of men that they alone possess the gifts of intellect and artistry, and that such gifts are never given to women." Casulana’s melodic lines are singable and carefully attentive to the text, favoring dramatic dialogue in her polyphonic vocal works.
(Biography adapted from Wikipedia)
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677)
Born in Venice, Barbara Strozzi was hailed as one of the finest singers and most prolific composers of the time, eventually publishing eight collections of songs — more music in print than even the most famous composers of her day. As the daughter of renowned poet Giulio Strozzi, Barbara spent her life in creative circles, mingling with all levels of Italian society. Her music is daring for a composer of her time and remarkable for many reasons. Perhaps most apparent is the tremendous care that she takes in setting her texts, creating intimate relationships between the words and music, as well as the unusual and often surprising harmony she explores. She is sometimes credited with the genesis of an entire musical genre — the Cantata.
barbarastrozzi.com
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)
Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn, was an exceptionally gifted musician whose potential was stifled by the social conventions of her upper-middle-class background in mid-19th-century Berlin. Alongside her brother Felix, she enjoyed an excellent general and musical education throughout her childhood, but while he was encouraged to pursue music professionally, she was prevented from doing so by her father and, later, her brother. Nevertheless, music remained centrally important to her within private spaces. In 1829, Fanny married the painter Wilhelm Hensel, whose active support of her gifts meant that–exceptionally–marriage and motherhood did not spell the end of her compositional life. She collaborated closely with her husband, Hensel responding to her music with drawings, and she composing songs to his poetry. Fanny was forty before she finally decided she would publish her music, in defiance of her brother. Tragically, she died of a stroke in 1847, age 41, leaving more than 460 completed but largely unheard works.
(Biography adapted from Oxford International Song Festival)
A catalog of Hensel's choral music may be found at HenselPushers.
Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
British composer Ethel Mary Smyth was a composer, conductor, author, and suffragette. Raised during the Victorian age, Smyth fought against societal restrictions that said a woman should not have a profession. Recognizing that the 19th-century idea of marriage was not compatible with a career or her personal inclinations, she wrote in a letter to her mother that “even if I were to fall desperately in love with BRAHMS and he were to propose to me, I should say no!” She insisted on an education, she insisted on performances of her works, and she insisted on having her works published. Between 1880 and 1930, she published two sets of lieder, several songs for voice and piano or chamber ensemble, numerous chamber pieces, two symphonic works, six operas, a mass, and a choral symphony. Today we also know of her unpublished works for solo piano, organ, and various chamber ensembles.
EthelSmyth.org
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Florence Price was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family, she had her first piano performance at the age of four and went on to have her first composition published at the age of 11. By the time she was 14, Florence had graduated from Capitol High School as valedictorian and was enrolled in the New England Conservatory, where she was able to study composition and counterpoint with composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged that fit the changing tastes of modern society. Some of her work was lost, but as more African-American and female composers have gained attention for their works, so has Price. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers were found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois. These consisted of dozens of her scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony.
(Text adapted from the International Florence Price Festival)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (2023; West Coast and European premieres)
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
Born in Paris, France to a musical family, Lili’s immense talent was recognized early on, and at the age of 2 she began receiving musical training from her mom and eventually her older sister Nadia. In 1895 she contracted bronchial pneumonia, after which she was constantly ill. Because of her frail health, she relied entirely on private study since she was too weak to obtain a full music education at the Conservatoire. In 1913, Lili became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for her Cantata Faust et Helene at the age of 20. Her phenomenal success made international headlines. Sadly, her residency in Rome was cut short, first by the outbreak of World War I, then by her own rapidly declining health. During her short life, she wrote many beautiful and complexly constructed pieces, including an unfinished opera. Lili Boulanger died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
(Text adapted from Music by Women.org)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Soir sur la plaine (2019)
Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989)
Undine Smith Moore, the granddaughter of slaves, began studying piano at the age of seven with Lillian Allen Darden. She attended Fisk University, where she studied piano with Alice M. Grass and first began to compose. In 1924, at the age of 20, she became the first graduate of Fisk to receive a scholarship to Juilliard. She graduated cum laude in 1926, and soon after became the supervisor of music for the Goldsboro, NC public school system. She began teaching piano, organ, and music theory at Virginia State College (now Virginia State University) in 1927, where she remained on faculty until her retirement in 1972. She commuted to Columbia University in New York City between 1929 and 1931 and received her Master of Arts in Teaching. Moore traveled extensively as a professor, conducting workshops and lecturing on Black composers. Among her many awards were the National Association of Negro Musicians Distinguished Achievement Award in 1975, the Virginia Governor’s Award in the Arts in 1985, and a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1984. She was also awarded honorary Doctor of Music degrees by Virginia State University in 1972 and Indiana University in 1976, and in 1977 was named music laureate of Virginia. Known to some as the “Dean of Black Women Composers,” Moore is most widely known for her choral works, though she also wrote for piano and various instrumental ensembles.
(Biography adapted from International Opus)
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)
The musical life of Margaret Bonds, a native of Chicago, began in her family’s living room, where her mother (an accomplished organist) facilitated gatherings of important black artists, writers, and musicians. It was here that Bonds met Florence Price, with whom she studied piano and composition. In 1933, Bonds performed Price’s Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the World’s Fair; with this performance, she holds the distinction of being the first African-American woman to perform as a soloist with a major American orchestra. In 1939, Bonds moved to New York and became an important figure in the artistic scene in Harlem. Her close friendship with Langston Hughes led to many of her celebrated vocal compositions, such as The Ballad of the Brown King, the song “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and the songs collected under the title Three Dream Portraits.
(Biography adapted from Cedille Records)
Alice Parker (1925-2023)
The late Alice Parker, an internationally renowned composer, conductor and teacher, studied composition and conducting at Smith College and the Juilliard School where she began her long association with Robert Shaw. The many Parker/Shaw settings of American folksongs, hymns and spirituals from that period formed an enduring repertoire for choruses all around the world. She published more than 500 compositions, ranging from operas through song cycles, cantatas and choral suites to individual anthems. Parker served on the Board of Directors of Chorus America and was named their first Director Laureate. In 2013 she received the Robert Shaw Award from the American Choral Directors Association and in 2015 the Harvard Glee Club Foundation Medal. Named Distinguished Composer of the Year 2000 by the American Guild of Organists, she was the recipient of six honorary doctorates and the Smith College Medal as well as grants from ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the American Music Center.
(Biography adapted from ECS Publishing)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal (2019)
Betty Jackson King (1928-1994)
Betty Jackson King had a rich and varied background in music. She received a B.M. on piano and a M.M. in composition from Roosevelt University, Chicago, with further study at Oakland University, Glassboro College, and others. Her piano teachers included her mother, Gertrude Jackson Taylor, Saul Dorfman, and Maurice Dumesnil; organ: Joseph Lockett and Abba Leifer; Composition: Karel B. Jarik; and voice: Thelma Waide Brown. She taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Roosevelt University, Dillard University (New Orleans, LA), and Wildwood High School (Wildwood, NJ). King pursued careers in composing and teaching and served as a choral conductor-clinician and lecturer in churches and universities. Her honors include a scholarship from the Chicago Umbrian Glee Club, awards from the National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc., “Outstanding Leaders in Elementary and Secondary Education,” and “The International Black Writers Conference.” King was past president of NANM, Inc. Her compositions include Saul of Tarsus, My Servant Job, Biblical operas; Simon of Cyrene, an Easter cantata; Requiem; The Kids in School With Me, a ballet with orchestration; Life, cycle for violin and piano; Vocalise for soprano, cello and piano; sacred, secular novelty, choral compositions; and spiritual arrangements.
(Biography adapted from Song of America)
Ysaÿe M. Barnwell (b. 1946)
Ysaÿe M. Barnwell was born in New York City and has lived in Washington, D.C., for over 40 years. She began in music at the age of 2½, studying violin for 15 years with her father and majoring in music in high school. She sang in a choir while in junior high school and then in college. In 1976, she founded the Jubilee Singers at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. It was, there in 1979, that Bernice Johnson Reagon witnessed her as a singer and a Sign Language interpreter and invited her to audition for the all-woman African American a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock. Over the past two decades, Barnwell has earned a significant reputation as a commissioned composer and arranger, author, master teacher and choral clinician in African American cultural performance. She has two children’s books: No Mirrors In My Nana’s House and We Are One; a boxed set of African American stories and songs for young people: Um Hmm; and an instructional boxed set: Singing in the African American Tradition. Her workshop “Building a Vocal Community®: Singing in the African American Tradition” has been conducted on three continents, making her work in the field a significant source of inspiration for both singers and non-singers, a model of pedagogy for educators, and cultural activists and historians.
(Biography adapted from International Music Network (IMN))
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Would You Harbor Me? (2024); Wanting Memories (2019)
Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951)
Cecilia McDowall is one of the United Kingdom’s leading composers of sacred and secular choral music and has won many awards including, in 2014, the British Composer Award in the Choral category for her haunting work, Night Flight. McDowall’s distinctive style fuses fluent melodic lines with occasional dissonant harmonies and rhythmic exuberance. Her music has been commissioned and performed by such leading organizations as the City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus, St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral, BBC Singers, The Sixteen, Tenebrae, Oxford and Cambridge choirs, Kansas City Chorale and at festivals worldwide. In 2020 McDowall was presented with the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for a ‘consistently excellent body of work’.
ceciliamcdowall.co.uk
Upcoming Pacific Chorale performances:
In Dulci Jubilo (December 7 and 11, 2024)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Gaude et Laetare (2023); Christ Is the Morning Star (2022); Lo! He slumbers in his manger (2021)
Chen Yi (b. 1953)
Born in Guangzhou, China into a home filled with classical music, Chen Yi studied violin and piano from the age of three. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, she was separated from her family and sent into forced labor in the countryside for two years. But she managed to take her instrument along, and credits this experience with providing her with knowledge of the wider life and music of her motherland and its people. At 17, she returned to her home city and served as concertmaster and composer with a traditional Beijing Opera Troupe, and also began her research of Chinese traditional music and Western classical music theory. When the school system was restored in 1977, she became the first woman in China to receive the degree of Master of Arts in composition. In 1983, she went to the United States for further study, and in 1993 received her Doctor of Musical Arts with distinction from Columbia University. Dr. Chen’s music is performed worldwide and has been recorded on many labels. She continues to be active as a violinist in new music and as an ethnomusicologist in Chinese music and is co-editor of the Music From China Newsletter, an English and Chinese bilingual publication, introducing Chinese music, both traditional and contemporary, to wider audience and scholars.She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
(Biography adapted from bruceduffie.com)
Galina Grigorjeva (b. 1962)
Galina Grigorjeva, born in Crimea, Ukraine, and now living in Estonia, has garnered international appreciation for the remarkably subtle and animated melodic style of her music. She studied at Odessa Conservatory and St Petersburg Conservatory. She later moved to Tallinn to study with Lepo Sumera at the Estonian Academy of Music and has remained in Estonia as a resident where she now works as a freelance composer. Her choral music is deeply rooted in the traditions of the Orthodox Church and in ancient Russian and Slavonic folklore. Although clearly by a contemporary composer, her works have a timeless, even hypnotic, quality that seems to reach back through the ages. Grigorjeva’s music has been performed by all over the world by ensembles such as Hortus Musicus, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, Moscow Patriarchate Choir, State Choir Latvija, percussion ensemble Kroumata (Sweden), and Raschèr Saxophone Quartet.
(Biography adapted from ISCM.org)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
On Leaving (2022); In Paradisum (2019)
Rosephanye Powell (b. 1962)
Dr. Rosephanye Dunn Powell has been hailed as one of America’s premier women composers of choral music. Dr. Powell’s compositions include sacred and secular works for mixed chorus, women’s chorus, men’s chorus, and children’s voices, and have been conducted and premiered by nationally-renowned choral conductors including Anton Armstrong, Philip Brunelle, Bob Chilcott, Rodney Eichenberger, Tom Hall, Albert McNeil, Tim Seelig, and André Thomas. Her work has been auctioned by Chorus America and her compositions are in great demand at choral festivals around the country, frequently appearing on the regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, as well as Honor Choir festivals. An accomplished singer and voice teacher, Dr. Powell’s research focuses on the art of the African-American spiritual and voice care concerns for voice professionals. Dr. Powell serves as Professor of Voice at Auburn University. She previously served on the faculties of Philander Smith College (AR) and Georgia Southern University. Dr. Powell holds degrees from The Florida State University, Westminster Choir College, and Alabama State University.
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Christmas Memories (2021); Sorida (A Zimbabwe Greeting) (2019)
Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. Her works represent a wide range of genres, from orchestral to chamber, to wind ensemble, as well as vocal, choral and opera, and have been recorded on more than seventy album releases. She is a major figure in contemporary classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto and a 2020 Grammy for her Harp Concerto. In 2018, Higdon received the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is given to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Most recently, the recording of Higdon's Percussion Concerto was inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Higdon's blue cathedral is today’s most performed contemporary orchestral work, with more than 600 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than seventy CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for two Grammy awards.
jenniferhigdon.com
Upcoming Pacific Chorale performances:
O Magnum Mysterium (2024-25 Season)
From solo to orchestra, epigram to epic, Edie Hill’s music unfolds seamlessly in all spaces and idioms. A widely acclaimed composer, Hill’s music has been performed around the world in such diverse venues as Lincoln Center, the L.A. County Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center, St. Paul’s The Schubert Club, The Cape May Festival (NJ), The Downtown Arts Festival (NYC), Liviu Cultural Center (Romania), Feszek Müvészklub (Budapest), as well as venues in Thailand, Ireland, Iceland, Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, the Minnesota State Fair, classrooms and cafes, and basilicas and back yards. Hill’s choral career took off in 1996 when she won the Dale Warland Singers Choral Ventures Program commission with Poem for 2084. Since then, her choral music has been widely performed by renowned ensembles such as Cantus, the Rose Ensemble, VocalEssence, The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists, Valborg Ensemble (The Netherlands), and Harmonium Choral Society, The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Nederlands Kamerkooras well as by many collegiate choirs throughout North America. Her imaginative text choices and her “masterful facility for setting words and exploiting the richness of texts keeps her in demand as a choral composer.”
ediehill.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
We Bloomed in Spring (2022); From the Wingbone of a Swan (2019)
Recently named one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” by The Washington Post, Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). The winner of the 2014 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Lebenbom Competition, Snider’s recent works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by American women suffragists; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission for the legendary Emerson String Quartet’s farewell tour; Mass for the Endangered, a Trinity Wall Street-commissioned prayer for the environment for choir and ensemble, programmed by dozens of choirs the world over; Embrace, an orchestral ballet for the Birmingham Royal Ballet; and Hildegard, an upcoming opera on 12th c. visionary/polymath/composer St. Hildegard von Bingen commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, to premiere in 2025.
sarahkirklandsnider.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Mass for the Endangered (2024)
Korean composer Hyo-Won Woo has emerged as a formidable voice in choral music. Her groundbreaking works blend traditional Korean musical elements and Western technique, and include settings of the Latin text, playful spatial music, and arrangements examining wordless human encounters. Since 1996, Woo has held the esteemed position of composer-in-residence with the Seoul Ladies' Singers. Additionally, she played a pivotal role with the Incheon City Chorale, led by the globally acclaimed Hak-won Yoon, from 1999 to 2014. Over two decades of collaboration between Woo and Mr. Yoon have charted a new course for choral music in Korea. Woo's compositions enjoy global acclaim, having been celebrated at prestigious events such as the 2009 ACDA National Conference, Polyfolia in France, and the IFCM choral symposium.
www.hyowonwoo.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Me-Na-Ri (Space Music) (2021); Pal-So-Seong (8 Laughing Voices) (2019)
Zanaida Robles (b. 1979)
Zanaida Robles is a familiar face and voice to Pacific Chorale audiences, having sung with us as a chorister and soloist for many years. Born, raised, and educated in Southern California, she is in demand as a vocalist, conductor, clinician and adjudicator for competitions, festivals, and conferences related to choral and solo vocal music. She serves on the national board of the National Association of Negro Musicians and is chair of the board of directors of Tonality, a non-profit organization that promotes peace, unity, and social justice through choral music performance in Los Angeles. Zanaida holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the USC Thornton School of Music, a Master of Music degree from CSU Northridge, a Bachelor of Music degree from CSU Long Beach, and is a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.
zanaidarobles.com
Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, opera, and publishing. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt. Hagen’s commissions include Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, Voces8, the International Federation of Choral Music, the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band, among many others.
jocelynhagen.com
Upcoming Pacific Chorale performances:
Mother's Song (December 7 and 11, 2024)
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (2022); To See the Sky (2019)
Canadian composer and educator Sarah Quartel is known for her fresh and exciting approach to choral music. Deeply inspired by the life-changing relationships that can occur while making choral music, Sarah writes in a way that connects singer to singer, ensemble to conductor, and performer to audience. Her works are performed by choirs across the world, and she has been commissioned by groups including the American Choral Directors Association, the National Children's Chorus of the United States of America, and New Dublin Voices. Since 2018 she has been exclusively published by Oxford University Press, and she continues to work as a clinician and conductor at music education and choral events at home and abroad.
sarahquartel.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Density of Light (2022); This Endris Night (2021); Huron Carol (2018)
Upcoming Pacific Chorale performances:
Density of Light (2024-25 Season)
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy Awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and tv series including Fleishman is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyonce’s Homecoming. Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival.
carolineshaw.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
To the Hands (2024); Music in Common Time (2022); and the swallow (2022); Her Beacon Hand Beckons (2019)
Los Angeles resident Reena Esmail is an Indian-American composer of Indian and Western classical music. Esmail attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and earned her Bachelor of Music degree in composition from The Juilliard School and her Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Yale School of Music. Her doctoral thesis, entitled "Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians", explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers. Esmail's music includes orchestral, chamber and choral work. She is currently an Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music connecting music traditions of India and the West.
reenaesmail.com
Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose compositions have been performed widely in the U.S. and internationally by Central West Ballet, Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW ensemble, Conspirare and the Miró Quartet, soprano Liv Redpath, Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Modesto Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, and Phoenix Chorale. A winner of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA)'s inaugural Raymond W. Brock Competition for Professional Composers, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, Trumbore has also been awarded artist residencies at Copland House, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Tusen Takk, and Ucross.
daletrumbore.com
Recent Pacific Chorale performances:
Spiritus Mundi (2022); In the Middle (2018)
Some helpful resources to learn more:
Choral Music Composed by Women: A Brief History, by Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister • Choral Journal of the American Choral Directors Association, Vol. 59, No. 10
Choral Music by Women Composers • database by Orange County Women's Chorus
Women Composers by Time Period • timeline by Oxford Music Online
The Big List • database by Donne Foundation