Voices of Women March 9, 2013

San Francisco Choral Artists present Voices of Women, A program celebrating music by women and about women, dreamed up by one of the strongest advocates of new choral music in the Bay Area, Magen Solomon.

"We have in this well-spoken, highly literate, and enthusiastic teacher-performer the kind of driving force that classical music so sorely needs," states Lynn Rene Bayley in Fanfare Magazine.

With her exceptional talent and seemingly endless energy, Ms. Solomon has moved mountains to bring the music of living composers to Bay Area concert stages in the past two decades. As Artistic Director of San Francisco Choral Artists, she founded the Composer-in-Residence program in 1999, the New Voices Project (a competition for composers under the age of 30) in 2005, and the Composer-Not-in-Residence program in 2010. In the last two seasons alone, SFCA has presented 26 world premieres of new works, 26 works by San Francisco Bay Area composers, and seven works by composers under age the age of 30.

When one gives this much goodness and beauty to the world, it doesn't go unnoticed or unrewarded. In 2012 Solomon and the Choral Artists received the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming, and were honored with the Roger Nixon Living Music Initiative. The Initiative, created in honor of the eminent composer Roger Nixon (1921-2009) by his five children, has allowed SFCA to nearly double the funding for their existing composer-focused programs, as well as for new recordings.

Voices of Women features old and new masters, from Renaissance composer Maddalena Casulana to the group's first female Composer-Not-in-Residence, Eleanor Aversa. The program showcases hidden talent next to famous women Meredith Monk, Fanny Hensel, Chen Yi, Alice Parker, and Pauline Oliveros. And then there are works about women written by male composers: Hymn to St. Cecilia by Britten, Waltz for Debbie by jazz pianist Bill Evans, and anima gaia by Composer-in-Residence Mark Winges.

Official Website: http://www.sfca.org