Fairfield County Festival of Women Composers

Fairfield County Festival of Women Composers celebrates classical music by women

Alma Mahler, an accomplished composer, married Gustav Mahler when she was 21 and he was 42.  Here's a letter he wrote to her on the eve of their marriage:

 A husband and wife who are both composers: how do you envisage that? If, at a time when you should be attending to household duties or fetching me something I urgently needed… if at such a moment you were befallen by 'inspiration': what then? From now on you have only one profession: to make me happy! You must renounce everything superficial and conventional, all vanity and outward show. In return you must wish for nothing except my love.

The public is invited to an extraordinary performance of music composed by women at the inaugural Fairfield County Festival of Women Composers to be held on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Church in Westport.  Admission is $15 for adults and $10 for students; refreshments are included.  Call (203) 296-2117 to reserve tickets, or simply pay at the door.

This performance features exceptional professional talent, all of whom have donated their time to this unusual concert.  The abundant and varied musical offerings will include four-hand piano works by famed New England composer Amy Beach to be performed by Justine Macurdy and Patti Preiss-Harris, as well as composer Carolyn Halsted's new "Water Songs," a song cycle for mezzo-soprano, baritone and piano set to poems by Emily Dickinson, Rabindranath Tagore, James Joyce and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Soprano Kathleen Theisen will perform her own compositions set to texts by Robert Siegel and e.e. cummings.  Poet Robert Siegel plans to be in attendance.  Well-known soloist Margaret Mills will play four rarely heard piano preludes by Ruth Crawford Seeger, and fifteen-year-old composer Lynnea Aillery will present her new work for piano, "Searching."  Also featured will be solo songs for mezzo-soprano by Cecile Chaminade, Clara Wieck Schumann, and Louise Reichardt, plus contemporary composer Jessica Rudman's vocal pieces.  Members of the Unitarian Church in Westport's Chamber Choir, conducted by Dr. EdWard Thompson, Minister of Music at the Church, will perform works by local composer Alma Hamilton, the late M. Louise Miller, Gwyneth Walker and Ysaye Barnwell.

Proceeds from this exciting event will be evenly divided between the Unitarian Church in Westport and the Festival organization.

This concert evolved in connection with the ongoing Hartford Festival of Women Composers, which has over the last decade presented the work of more than 100 different composers, some of them local and very much alive.

For additional information on the Unitarian Church, contact John Carroll at (203) 227-7205 or visit www.uuwestport.org.