Composing Women - Jennifer Higdon

Born in Brooklyn in 1962, Jennifer Higdon grew up near Atlanta and in Appalachian Tennessee, teaching herself flute at 15 and playing drums in high school marching band… not beginning college composition studies until she was 21. Nevertheless, she earned degrees from Penn and the Curtis institute, …

Composing Women - Chen Yi

From the studio… to the work camps… to the opera… and on to academia and America… Chen Yi is the most prominent woman of a generation of Chinese-born composers.

Composing Women - Helen Taaffe Zwilich

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s career has been marked by several firsts: she was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in composition from Julliard; she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in music; and the first female composer to be mentioned in Charles Schulz’s iconic comic strip Peanut…

Composing Women - Joan Tower

American Joan Tower did not originally intend to become a composer, but at 18 she wrote a piece for a college class and immediately thought, “I can do better”--- and, as she said in 2018, “for the next 60 years, I tried to do better.”

Composing Women - Thea Musgrave

Scottish composer Thea Musgrave once had a dream in which a single clarinet player led the entire orchestra to mutiny--- a dream she realized in her 1967 Concerto for Orchestra.

Composing Women - Germaine Taillefesse

Born Germaine Taillefesse… she changed her last name to spite her father, who tried to forbid her a career in music…Germaine Tailleferre was the only female member of the famed generatios known as The Six.n of French composer

Composing Women - Lili and Nadia Boulanger

One composed brilliantly but died early in the 20th century… the other helped create the composers of the rest of the century. Sisters Lili and Nadia Boulanger both achieved important firsts for women in music. Born into a Paris Conservatoire family, they showed their talent early: Nadia enrolled …

Composing Women - Florence Beatrice Price

In 2009 a family began renovating an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois, and were astonished to discover piles of paper throughout the home… music manuscripts. The papers, and the house, had once belonged to composer Florence Beatrice Price, the first African-American woman to have a symphony p…

Composing Women - Rebecca Clark

Imagine composing music that was praised by critics, and then being told only a man could have written it! That happened more than once to English-born composer Rebecca Clarke. Born in 1886, she began her musical life with the violin, eventually became the first female composition student of famed…

Composing Women - Amy Cheney Beach

The first successful American woman composer of large-scale works, Amy Cheney could improvise counter-melodies at age two, taught herself to read music at three, and began playing her own works at her first public recitals at seven. From 16 to 18 she impressed Boston audiences with virtuosic perfor…