Charles Petzold

Every day since the beginning of March I’ve been posting YouTube videos of the music of women composers on Facebook, and then consolidating them in groups of 30 in this blog. The first consolidation included composers born from 810 to 1887, and the second from 1892 to 1938. This one includes composers born from 1939 to 1958.

All blog entries on women composers have now been consolidated in the new web site Women Composing.

Barbara Kolb (born 1939)

Barbara Kolb was born in Hartford Connecticut. Her father was music director of radio station WTIC in Hartford, and that’s how she was first exposed to music. She would meet musicians who were interviewed on the radio, and she went with her parents to jazz clubs. She studied composition and clarinet at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. Her studies continued in Europe on a Fulbright Fellowship, and she has since taught at Rhode Island College and Eastman School of Music.

Barbara Kolb’s compositions generally employ a modernist vocabulary but often with a distinct jazz influence, and occasionally some minimalist influence as well.

The variety of Barbara Kolb’s compositions can be sampled from studio recordings available on YouTube and elsewhere. One good starting point is the 1992 album Millefoglie and Other Works which includes Millefoglie (1985) for chamber orchestra and computer-generated tape, Extremes (1989) for flute and cello, Chromatic Fantasy (1979) for narrator and six instruments, and Solitaire (1971) for piano, vibraphone, and pre-recorded tape. Here is that recording of Solitaire:

Unfortunately, not much of Barbara Kolb’s music is available in live performance, which might indicate that it’s ripe for rediscovery. One of the few exceptions is an Homage to Keith Jarrett and Gary Burton (1976) for flute and vibraphone. The title refers to jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and vibraphonist Gary Burton, who performed together back in the day and released a 1970 collaborative album.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (born 1939)

Ellen Zwilich was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

She was born Ellen Taaffe in Miami. She studied violin at an early age and attended Florida State University, where she earned a bachelor of music in 1980. She played violin with the American Symphony Orchestra and later attended Juilliard, becoming the first woman to earn a doctorate in composition there.

Her vibrant Symphony No. 1, also titled Three Movements for Orchestra won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Music. (Interestingly, there was one other finalist, who was also a woman: Vivian Fine.) Following that, she earned a number of commissions for other works. Here’s a 1984 composition, Concerto for Trumpet and 5 Players:

Ellen Zwilich’s Piano Concerto No. 3, also titled Shadows, dates from 2011:

She has said that this music pertains to America’s immigrant experience, including those who came here eagerly and those who were taken by force. She wrote

Shadows is a work evoking the recollection of remnants of the past - the recalling of ancestral, religious, and cultural roots in the constant migration of people around the world. Although Shadows has something of a program, I see it as truly belonging to the listener, who will respond and understand it in relation to his or her own emotional and experiential background.

In the 2nd movement of Shadows, we can hear a type of blues dirge, and in the rollicking 3rd movement, both jazz and klezmer make appearances as well as a type of unrelenting urban rush. (Warning: the video has some sudden noise followed by a little discontinuity in the 2nd movement.)

Wendy Carlos (born 1939)

Wendy Carlos was born Walter Carlos in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She started playing piano at age 6 and wrote her first composition at the age of 10. She graduated from Brown University in 1962 with a degree in music, and from Columbia University in 1965 with a master’s degree in composition. She began transitioning to female a few years later.

Wendy Carlos had been involved in electronic music since at least the early 1960s, and she met Robert Moog around that time. She had several suggestions for improving the synthesizers that Robert Moog was building, and her suggestions were incorporated into his later designs. Carlos was an early adapter of the Moog synthesizer. She used it to make sound effects for commercials, and she composed several works for conventional instruments and electronic sounds.

In 1968, Wendy Carlos created the landmark album Switched-On Bach, featuring the music of Johann Sebastian Bach realized by overdubbing tracks played on a Moog synthesizer. It was a big hit and spent 59 weeks on the Billboard 200 charts.

Although Wendy Carlos has created albums of original compositions (including Sonic Seasonings, Digital Moonscapes, and Beauty in the Beast) she is perhaps better known for her work on the soundtracks to the Stanley Kubrick films A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, and for the movie Tron.

It has been difficult to find a reasonable YouTube video of a representative Wendy Carlos composition. In general, she has not allowed her music to be streamed or made available on YouTube. While her scores for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining are well known, these are mostly electronic arrangements of existing compositions.

This wouldn’t normally be my first choice, but here is a suite of the music that Wendy Carlos composed for the soundtrack of “Tron.”

Haruna Miyake (born 1942)

Haruna Miyake was born in Tokyo and studied piano from a young age. She appeared with the Tokyo Symphony playing Mozart at 14 and continued studying piano and composition at Juilliard.

Haruna Miyake tends to blend styles that are influenced by Japanese culture, by traditional western culture, and by modernist western music. This is her Bird Shadows for piano, from 1984, which is sometimes reminiscent of ... Chopin? Schumann? the piano bar on the corner? ... and sometimes not.

This is Haruna Miyake’s 1999 composition The Change of Time, which combines the Japanese hichiriki (a double-reed instrument) with sung poems from the Man’yōshū, a Japanese collection compiled in the 8th century:

The sound of the hichiriki might be too piercing to ears accustomed to the mellower sounds of western instruments, but the overall effect is quite haunting.

Meredith Monk (born 1942)

Meredith Monk was born in New York City. Her mother was a professional singer, and her maternal grandparents were also musicians. Meredith Monk studied composition at Sarah Lawrence, where she earned a bachelor’s degree.

Meredith Monk’s website describes her as a “composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations.” Her music tends to focus on the voice (including extended techniques) and are often integrated into theatrical works or dance. For five decades she has been a much beloved figure in the “downtown” avant-garde music scene in New York City.

The first 8 minutes of this video is a performance of Meredith Monk’s 1984 composition Memory Song for three vocalists with instrumental accompaniment provided by the Bang on a Can ensemble.

Meredith Monk is in the center of the three singers.

She also composes for instrumental ensembles, such as this 2005 string quartet called Stringsongs:

Tania León (born 1943)

Tania León was born in Havana of mixed French, Spanish, Chinese, African, and Cuban heritage. She studied piano at an early age and continued her music studies at New York University after she emigrated to the United States in 1967.

Tania León generally composes in a European modernist idiom, but with much lyricism and often a strong rhythmic drive. She sometimes integrates folk melodies and rhythms from her native country. She has composed piano music, vocal music, numerous chamber works, and several pieces for orchestra.

Her composition Stride was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and celebrates Susan B. Anthony. It premiered in February 2020 right before the Covid lockdown and won León the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2021. It will receive an encore performance by the New York Philharmonic during the second week of October 2022 when the orchestra returns to their newly renovated home.

A book about Tania León entitled Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life was published in January of this year.

This is her De Memorias for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. It was commissioned by The Mexico City Woodwind Quintet and is here performed by Ensemble Connect.

Here’s her 2012 string trio À Tres Voces:

Three more videos of Tania Leon compositions are included in her entry in my blog entry on A Month of Black Composers.

Maggi Payne (born 1945)

Maggi Payne was born in Temple, Texas, and grew up in Amarillo. She first heard a flute when she was 9 years old and plunged into learning how to play it. She was particularly interested in exploring different flute effects, often in combination with a tape recorder that she acquired at the age of 10.

She studied flute at Northwestern University and worked with electronic music in graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana. She taught recording engineering, composition, and electronic music at Mills College from 1972 to 2018.

Maggi Payne’s website describes her as “a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music, video artist, installation artist, flutist, recording engineer/editor, and historical remastering engineer.” She has composed a number of works for video, film, and dance. Some of her electronic compositions have been released on commercial recordings and are available on YouTube. Here’s System Test (fire and ice) from 2001:

Maggi Payne has also written music for conventional instruments. At least once every decade, she aims to write a composition for solo flute. One of her most popular works is Reflections composed in 2003 for the National Flute Association’s 2004 High School Competition. It is often performed with balletic movements by the flutist or other dancers.

Laurie Spiegel (born 1945)

Laurie Spiegel is one of several women profiled in the 2020 documentary Sisters with Transistors who sidestepped the prejudice against women composers by becoming early explorers in electronic music.

She was born in Chicago and is largely self-taught in music. She attended Shimer College (which implements a Great Books program) and as part of a study-abroad program, spent two years at Oxford. She earned a Social Sciences degree from Shimer but studied some music theory and composition while abroad.

Laurie Spiegel worked with several electronic music systems over the years, including at Bell Laboratories. She tends towards an algorithmic and interactive approach to music. In 1986 she created the music composition software Music Mouse for the Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari computers. It was most recently updated for Mac OS 9 and remains available.

Part of Laurie Spiegel’s 1972 composition Sediment was used in 2001 for the soundtrack of the movie The Hunger Games. Here’s the whole composition from the album An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music, Vol. 4:

About 2½ hours of Laurie Spiegel’s music is available on the two-CD compilation The Expanding Universe and another hour on Unseen Worlds. Both albums are available on Spotify and some tracks are available on YouTube. Here’s a 1975 composition called Drums from The Expanding Universe collection:

Laurie Spiegel’s composition Harmonices Mundi (also called Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds) is a realization of Kepler’s 1619 book of the same name in which he described astronomical phenomenon in geometric forms:

An except was chosen to begin the “Sounds of the Earth” section on the Golden Record that accompanied the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft into space.

Laura Dean (born 1945)

Laura Dean is primarily known as a choreographer, but she often composed her own music for her dances, and she called her company Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians.

Laura Dean was born on Staten Island and began learning dance and music at the Third Street Music School in New York City. She later studied at the School of American Ballet, graduated from the High School of Performing Arts, studied at the Joffrey Ballet School, and was a dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She founded her own dance company in 1972, and by 1976 it had become Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians.

Laura Dean is best known for incorporating spinning and whirling into her choreography. Ballet dancers normally spin by “spotting”: To prevent dizziness they quickly turn their heads to remain oriented towards a particular spot for much of the turn. Laura Dean developed a technique to spin without spotting, reminiscent of Sufi dancing of the Middle East. She has said:

Spinning is a central fact of the universe. Not only are the planets spinning, but the galaxies are spinning, too, and the Milky Way, our galaxy is a spiral pattern. Even our DNA is a spiral. Whatever that universal force is, I feel a kinship.

Although Laura Dean choreographed dances to the music of other composers (most notably Steve Reich), many of her pieces use her own music, which was usually performed slightly offstage. Her music is minimalist in its use of repeating patterns, and relentlessly rhythmic, sometimes accentuated by the dancers stomping on the stage.

I saw at last one performance by Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians in 1978, and I can still remember the breathtaking exhilarating effect on the audience of the synergistic combination of her music and dance.

Unfortunately, the only way to experience a Laura Dean performance today is through old videos. This video is a 1978 performance of one of Laura Dean’s seminal works, called Spiral, created and premiered the previous year:

In this work, the spinning begins gradually but by the 30-minute mark, the whole company is spinning, as well as making spinning patterns around each other. Laura Dean is the dancer in white

Suzanne Ciani (1946)

Suzanne Ciani got started with electronic music in the 1970s and currently gives live improvisatory concerts using the Buchla modular synthesizer and quadrophonic sound.

She was born in Indiana and raised in a suburb of Boston. She began playing piano at the age of six and later studied music at Wellesley College. She first learned about music technology through evening classes at MIT. She earned a master’s degree in composition at University of California, Berkeley.

Around 1968 she met the early electronic music instrument designer Don Buchla, and she quickly became a strong proponent of his machines. In the late 1960s she began earning money doing music for commercials, and throughout the 1970s, she composed musical logos, sounds for pinball machines, and other commercial work, including synthesizing the sound of a Coca-Cola bottle being opened and poured.

In 1980 Suzanne Ciani appeared on the David Letterman Show demonstrating electronic music:

In 1981 she composed the film score for The Incredible Shrinking Woman (starring Lily Tomlin), which was the first Hollywood feature with a score composed solely by a woman. She has released over 20 solo albums since 1979. A documentary about her (A Life in Waves) is available on Amazon Prime Video. She is also featured in the documentary Sisters with Transistors.

In recent years, Suzanne Ciani has been doing “Live in Quadraphonic” concerts where she improvises on the Buchla. This video is a 2019 appearance at the LA Public Library. The music starts at about the 6-minute mark:

At about the 44-minute mark, the performance is followed by a fascinating and informative interview with Suzanne Ciani conducted by author Claire Evans.

Joan La Barbara (born 1947)

Joan La Barbara is famous for her pioneering use of extended vocal techniques, both in her own compositions and music by other contemporary composers.

She was born in Philadelphia, and received her music education at Syracuse University, New York University, and the Tanglewood/Berkshire Music Center. According to her website, she also “gained compositional tools as an apprentice with the numerous composers with whom she has worked for over four decades.”

Joan La Barbara appears on the recordings of Steve Reich’s Drumming (1971) and Philip Glass’s North Star (1977). She has also worked with composers John Cage, Lou Harrison, Morton Subotnick, Morton Feldman, and Robert Ashley. Her early albums of her own music include Voice in the Original Instrument (1976) and Tapesongs (1978) in which she appeared on the cover wearing a fabulous gown made of recording tape:

The following video is Joan La Barbara’s 2016 composition “A Murmuration for Chibok” for treble choir with text by Vietnamese American poet and novelist Monique Truong, commissioned and performed by The Young People’s Chorus of New York City:

Chibok is the town in Nigeria where 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014; the composition captures both the initial gaiety of a normal school day, and a mournful promise to never forget.

Joan La Barbara’s recent composition ad astra… for cellist who sings was premiered online:

Afterwards, the composer speaks a bit about the composition.

Laurie Anderson (born 1947)

Laurie Anderson had been known as a New York City performance artist for several years before her 1981 song “O Superman” became a novelty hit and made her famous beyond that world.

She was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and played violin with the Chicago Youth Symphony. She went to Mills College in California, graduated from Barnard with an MA in art history, and from Columbia with an MFA in sculpture.

Laurie Anderson began performing in New York City in the 1970s, often combining monologues with instrumental accompaniment. Two of her early pieces are included in the 1977 album New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, which is available on Spotify. She experimented with electronics and tape, for example, creating a Tape Bow Violin by attaching a tape recorder playback head to a violin, and a length of prerecorded tape to the violin bow. By bowing the tape across the playback head, she could play it forwards and backwards at various speeds. Here are two songs that use the Tape Bow Violin:

She also experimented with passing her voice through vocorders to alter the timbre and create different personas, such as in the song “O Superman,” which even got its own music video:

The song appeared on the 1982 album Big Science and was part of a large two-evening work The United States Part I to IV, performed live in 1983 and later released as an album. The 1985 theater work Home of the Brave was released as a movie and then on VHS and laserdisc (but not yet on DVD). Following 9/11, Laurie Anderson created a more autobiographical, introspective, and subdued theater work entitled Happiness that received a mixed reception. Her most recent albums include Homeland released in 2010, the soundtrack for her 2015 documentary Heart of a Dog, and a 2018 collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, Landfall.

The following video consists of two pieces from Home of the Brave. The first, “Drum Dance” uses sensors placed beneath her clothing that allow her to play synthesized percussion sounds by tapping various places of her body. This is followed by “Smoke Rings.”

Shulamit Ran (born 1949)

Shulamit Ran was born in Tel Aviv. She heard Jewish cantor music on the radio at an early age and began composing her own songs to Hebrew poetry at the age of seven. Her serious study of composition started two years later.

At 14, Shulamit Ran moved from Israel to New York City to attend the Mannes School of Music. Her composition teachers included Elliott Carter. She has been teaching at the University of Chicago since 1973.

Shulamit Ran has composed music for piano and other solo instruments, for orchestra, for choruses, for chamber ensembles, and in 1997 an opera, Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk). Her Symphony won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. This is her orchestral composition Legends from 1992–93):

The following video of Shulamit Ran’s dramatic 2008 string sextet Lyre of Orpheus includes some preliminary remarks by the composer. The music begins at about the 5:40 mark:

Although the composer admits that the title came after she composed the work, in retrospect she found that the music did have a kind of narrative that paralleled the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The first cello is considered the “protagonist” of the work, while the second cello also plays an unusual role in that its lowest string is tuned a third lower to get deeper notes.

Mary Jane Leach (born 1949)

Mary Jane Leach was born in Vermont and is now based in New York City. Her website states:

In many of her works Leach creates an otherworldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities. The result is striking music that has a powerful effect on listeners.

Mary Jane Leach is also the primary archivist of the music of the late composer Julius Eastman, and she co-edited the book Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and His Music.

This is her gorgeous and haunting 1993 composition Xantippe’s Rebuke for solo oboe and 8 taped oboes:

Xanthippe was the much younger wife of Socrates. Although the 8 prerecorded oboe parts are rather rhythmically rigid (which is helpful for the solo part of keep time), the solo part is more flexible and lyrical.

Her 2007 composition Bach’s Set uses overdubbed cellos with a motif from one of Bach’s cello suites:

Eleanor Alberga (born 1949)

Eleanor Alberga is from Kingston, Jamaica, and decided at the age of 5 that she wanted to become a concert pianist. She began her music education in Jamaica and was introduced to the rich panorama of Jamaican music, including ska and reggae. She later performed with a Jamaican folk ensemble.

Eleanor Alberga also began composing at an early age. The catalogue of works on her website includes a one-minute piano piece from 1959 entitled Andy about her dog. In an interview, she said that at about the age of 12, she discovered the music of Béla Bartók, which she has said was “the first composer I really fell madly in love with.” She later continued studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and became involved with playing and improvising piano for a modern dance company. She continues to live in England.

Eleanor Alberga has composed two operas, and music for orchestras, choruses, piano, and chamber ensembles. While some of her music shows Caribbean influences, most of her compositions are in modernist (although decidedly accessible) European style.

This is Eleanor Alberga’s sonically fascinating On A Bat’s Back I do Fly (2000) for piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, horn, and percussion, with a title from a speech by Ariel in Shakespeare’s Tempest:

The video begins with an interview with the composer; the music starts at about the 4:50 mark.

Here’s Shining Gate or Morpheus from 2012 for horn and string quartet:

Videos of Eleanor Alberga’s first two string quartets are included in her entry in my blog entry on A Month of Black Composers.

Libby Larsen (born 1950)

Libby Larsen was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her interest in music began with her family: Her father played the clarinet, her mother enjoyed boogie-woogie, and she became familiar with the piano when her older sister started taking lessons. She attended the University of Minnesota, eventually leading to a PhD in Theory and Composition in 1978.

Libby Larsen has composed operas, music for orchestras, choruses, chamber ensembles, and songs. Her music assimilates numerous influences but often has a particularly American sound, such as her 1979 Cowboy Songs:

The American sound is quite evident in her 1994 composition Slang for clarinet, violin, and piano:

About Slang, Libby Larsen has written:

Its title refers to the use of both jazz and boogie slang and twentieth-century “new music” slang throughout the composition. I got the idea for Slang while I was working on a ballet for the Ohio Ballet. I was thinking about our American culture with its vast array of musical languages. I’m fascinated by the idea that just as we have developed slang in our speaking language, we have also developed a lexicon of musical slang. This composition explores the idea, asking the performers to freely change performance styles as the musical language dictates.

Ushio Torikai (born 1952)

Ushio Torikai was born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Her influences include western music, traditional and ancient Japanese music, and Buddhist chant. She has composed for western ensembles and instruments, choruses, Japanese instruments, and electronics.

Very little of Ushio Torikai’s music is available on YouTube. One exception is this live performance of FourTEEN for string quartet, which utilizes a great range of string timbres, and in which we can also hear suggestions of Japanese string instruments.

Kaija Saariaho (born 1952)

Kaija Saariaho is Finland’s most prominent living composer, and even (according to a 2019 poll conducted by BBC Music Magazine), the world’s greatest living composer.

She was born Kaija Laakkonen in Helsinki. She studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and starting in 1982, at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris, where she studied computer music and electronics. She was drawn to spectralism – the use of the spectral properties of sound as a basis for composition. Here is her 1987 composition Nymphéa (French for “water lily") for string quartet and electronics:

On her website she has written:

In preparing the musical material of the piece, I have used the computer in several ways. The basis of the entire harmonic structure is provided by complex cello sounds that I have analysed with the computer. The basic material for the rhythmic and melodic transformations are computer-calculated in which the musical motifs gradually convert, recurring again and again. I have used sounds of an original string quartet that are manipulated in the concert situation.

YouTube has a variety of Kaija Saariaho’s later orchestral and chamber music. This is a gorgeous and sonically spectacular three-movement orchestral composition from 2002 entitled Orion.

Here’s a 2014 piano trio entitled Light and Matter:

In 2016 her beautiful opera L’Amour de loin became only the second work by a woman composer staged by the Metropolitan Opera. (The first was Ethyl Smyth’s one-act opera “Der Wald” in 1903, but that was performed only as a preliminary appetizer to “Il Trovatore” and “La fille du regiment.”) Here’s just a little bit of the Metropolitan Opera production of L’Amour de loin with Susanna Phillips singing the lead part:

Chen Yi (born 1953)

Chen Yi was born in Guangzhou, China, and was first exposed to Western music through her parents’ collection of records and tapes. She began learning piano and violin at an early age but had to suppress her interest in Western music during the Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966. She was sent to the countryside to work as a farmer between the ages of 15 and 17, where she was incidentally exposed to Chinese folk songs.

When the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing reopened in 1977, Chen Yi was able to attend. She studied both Western music and traditional Chinese music at the Conservatory and in 1986 became the first Chinese woman to earn a Master of Arts in composition. She then moved to New York City to study composition at Columbia University where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts.

Chen Yi has written numerous compositions for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, voice, choruses, and orchestras, many of which incorporate Chinese instruments and influences. She currently teaches at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.

Chen Yi’s fusion of Western and Chinese music is quite evident in her thrilling Percussion Concerto from 1998, which Chen Yi says was “deeply inspired by the arts of Beijing Opera.” The percussion soloist (who also sings) is downstage right but notice also the three percussionists upstage behind the orchestra.

The website of Presser (who publishes Chen Yi’s music) has an extended description of the Percussion Concerto.

Here’s a chamber work Ning from 2001 for violin, cello, and pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument:

If you’re up for more, this video from a 2017 streaming from the Curtis Institute of Music includes a pre-concert interview with Chen Yi and six of her chamber works:

Judith Weir (born 1954)

Judith Weir was born in Cambridge, England. Although she has composed orchestral and chamber music, she is best known for her operas and theatrical works, many dealing with British medieval history or stories from her parents’ homeland of Scotland. She was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music in 2014, a post that has existed continuously since 1660.

Her 1979 opera King Harald’s Saga is subtitled “Grand opera in three acts for unaccompanied soprano singing eight roles,” even though it’s only about 10 to 15 minutes long and more accurately categorized as a monodrama. It is based on a 13th century Old Norse saga from Iceland entitled “Heimskringla.”

In 1066, King Harald of Norway is persuaded by English traitor Earl Tostig to invade England. After the Norwegian Army lands at Scarborough, they are defeated by Harold II of England, and Harald is killed in battle. This wonderful performance is by Danish soprano Carina Tybjerg Madsen.:

A synopsis is available on Wikipedia, a description of the roles is on Wise Music site. Deeper analyses are available in a graduate school paper "Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga: innovations of character and virtuosity in contemporary opera" and a dissertation "A Performance Guide to the Dramatic, Vocal, and Musical Challenges of Judith Weir’s Opera, King Harald’s Saga".

Laura Pettigrew (born 1954)

Laura Pettigrew is a Canadian composer who received a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in Composition from the University of Regina (Saskatchewan). She plays the flute and the flute figures in many of her compositions.

This is an evocative work for flute and piano called Echoes on Deception Lake:

This is an ochestral work entitled Dòchas, which is Scotch Gaelic for “hope”:

Anne Dudley (born 1956)

Anne Dudley is best known as a composer of film scores. She wrote music for The Crying Game, American History X, Monkeybone, The Walker, and Elle. She won an Academy Award for her score for The Full Monty and most recently I saw her name on the credits of Paul Verhoeven’s 2020 film Benedetta.

Anne Dudley graduated from King’s College London in 1978 with a master’s in music. She spent a number of years in the pop music industry as a session musician, arranger, and producer, and was a founding member of the band Art of Noise. Her film composing began in 1988.

This video is the 2019 premiere of Anne Dudley’s orchestral composition Hail the Superheroes, whose three movements pay homage to comic book superheroes The Defenders, Zatanna Zatara, and Quicksilver.

Pamela Z (born 1956)

Pamela Z was born Pamela Ruth Brooks in Buffalo and raised near Denver. She studied voice and received a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Colorado. She was a singer/songwriter in her earlier years before becoming interested in electronic manipulation of sound, and then moving to San Francisco.

On her website, Pamela Z describes herself and her music:

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures.

This is a 2012 composition And the Movement of the Tongue, which features tapes of people talking about and demonstrating their accents.

A fuller description by Pamela Z appears in the description of the video. It was originally composed for the Kronos Quartet and then expanded to string orchestra for the L.A.-based Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.

Videos Pamela Z’s solo work and collaborations are included in her entry in my blog entry on A Month of Black Composers.

Sally Beamish (born 1956)

Sally Beamish was born Sarah Frances Beamish in London. Her mother was a violinist of the renowned chamber music ensemble Academy of St. Martin in the Field. Sally studied viola at the Royal Northern College of Music, and later also played with the ASMF.

The viola often figures in Sally Beamish’s music. She has composed three viola concertos, as well as other orchestra and chamber music. Her 1996 opera Monster is based on the life of Mary Shelley.

Recently Sally Beamish was commissioned by the Academy of St. Martin in the Field to write a string octet, and she called it Partita:

The three movements feature (respectively) tunes from a Bach solo violin partita, from Handel’s Messiah (“And He shall reign for ever and ever”), and from Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Ellen Fullman (born 1957)

Ellen Fullman was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She studied sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute, but also began performing music. In New York City, she has collaborated with composer Pauline Oliveros and the Kronos Quartet.

Ellen Fullman is an instrument builder, particularly associated with Long String instruments. These are instruments with strings so long that they vibrate below the range of human hearing but produce overtones within hearing range.

This video is a composition called Harbors. Ellen Fullman plays a Long String instrument with strings up to 100 feet long that she sets vibrating with rosin-coated fingers. She is accompanied by composer and cellist Theresa Wong, who can be spotted in the opening scenes on the left behind the audience.

Hilda Paredes (born 1957)

Hilda Paredes was born in Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico. She studied piano and flute at a young age, and then studied composition at the Conservertoire in Mexico City. She continued her studies in London. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music, got a master’s degree from City University in London, and a PhD from Manchester University. She continues to live in London.

Hilda Paredes has composed music for orchestras, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, sometimes combined with electronics. Her 2018 chamber opera Harriet: Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman is a 90-minute theater work for soprano, percussion, violin, guitar, and electronics.

This is her 2004 composition Demente Cuerda (“Demented String”), a sonically spectacular concerto of sorts for solo harp with an ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, percussion, and string quintet.

Laetitia Sonami (born 1957)

Laetitia Sonami was born in France but settled in the U.S. in 1975. She studied composition at Mills College in Oakland and began pursuing an idiosyncratic career in electronic music.

Sonami is particularly interested in interactive real-time generation and manipulation of sound. Two of her inventions are the Lady’s Glove and the Spring Spyre, both of which she demonstrated in Artistic Keynotes for the 2014 NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) conference that are available on video.

The Lady’s Glove dates originally from 1991 but has undergone several enhancements. The first version consisted of a pair of rubber kitchen gloves with transducers on the fingertips to generate MIDI signals. Later versions were more sophisticated and fed signals into MAX-MSP software. She has written:

The intention in building such a glove was to allow movement without spatial reference, and most importantly to allow for multiple, simultaneous controls. The sounds are now “embodied,” the controls intuitive, and the performance fluid. It has become a fine instrument.

Here is a presentation of the final version of the Lady’s Glove before the device was retired. After a 3-minute introduction, Laetitia Sonami begins talking about the Lady’s Glove, but with unexpected interruptions and manipulations from the glove until it takes over:

The Spring Spyre is newer, and according to her website, “is based on the application of neural networks to real-time audio synthesis.”

Melinda Wagner (born 1957)

Melinda Jane Wagner was born in Philadelphia and currently resides in New Jersey. She earned degrees from Hamilton College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swathmore College, Syracuse University, and Hunter College.

Melinda Wagner’s compositions are often traditionally structured, and she imbues her modernist and abstract musical language with wonderful chromatic lyricism and a keen sense of orchestration. Her gloriously colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music. This is a recording of that work:

This is a recent chamber work entitled Unsung Chordata. In the description of the video, Melinda Wagner describes the work as being inspired by a video of a puffer fish.

Errollyn Wallen (born 1958)

Errollyn Wallen was born in Belize but moved with her family to London when she was two. When her father and mother moved to New York City without her, she was raised by her aunt and uncle. Her Belizean uncle instilled in her a love of literature, poetry, and music. She originally wanted to be a dancer but eventually focused on music. She studied at several schools, including Cambridge.

Errollyn Wallen’s eclectic approach to music is summed up in the motto of the Ensemble X that she founded: “We don’t break down barriers in music… We don’t see any.” She has written an opera The Silent Twins (2007), modernist music for traditional ensembles, as well as songs with a pop flavor that she sings and plays herself.

Her 2017 work A Mighty River was composed to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England. This is a beautiful performance by isolated teenage members of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain:

Videos of ErrollynWallen’s Cello Concerto and Triple Concerto are included in her entry in my blog entry on A Month of Black Composers.

Shirley J. Thompson (born 1958)

Shirley J. Thompson was born in London to Jamaican parents. She grew up playing the violin and singing in choruses. She graduated with a degree in music from Liverpool University and with a degree in composition from Goldsmiths’ College. She currently teaches at the University of Westminster.

Shirley Thompson’s website describes her as a “Composer, Artistic Director, Conductor, Academic, Violinist, Film Maker.” She has composed music for orchestras, choruses, and chamber ensembles, as well as music for film and television. In recent years she has collaborated with choreographers and filmmakers to create multimedia experiences.

Here is Shirley Thompson’s 2015 theater work Sacred Mountain: Incidents in the Life of Queen Nanny of the Maroons. This is one of a series of chamber operas about heroic women, in this case the early 18th century leader of the Jamaican Maroons who led a guerilla war against British colonialists.

Quite different is Blue Iris written for solo cello but here played on a violin:

Ready for More?

To continue chronologically, go to Still Another Month of Women Composers.