Voices of Women

Experience Voices of Women, an unusual program of music entirely by, for, and about women. The program includes old and new masters, from Renaissance composer Maddalena Casulana to the SFCA’s first female Composer-Not-in-Residence Eleanor Aversa. Featuring both unknown talent and eminent composers, including Meredith Monk, Fanny Hensel, Chen Yi, Alice Parker, and Pauline Oliveros. Works about women include the world premiere of anima gaia by Composer-in-Residence Mark Winges, and the beloved Hymn to St. Cecilia by Benjamin Britten, a masterpiece celebrating the patron saint of musicians. Don’t miss this beautiful concert and bring along your mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts.

Hear jazz, folk, early music, improvisation, works for men’s and women’s chorus, sound effects, a text-less piece, and even a work about a double helix. Pauline Oliveros’s works Humming Piece and Rock Piece are particularly unusual. They are both completely improvised, the former an audience participation tribute to the dwindling population of bees, and the latter using rocks as a musical source in a random and complex sound pattern that will engulf the audience. Eleanor Aversa’s piece Probably Helical pays homage to Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant female scientist from the 1940s and 50s whose contribution to science and the discovery of the double helix has mostly gone uncelebrated and unsung, until now…

Check out these blog posts by SFCA singer Deborah Underwood and 2013 Composer-in-Residence Mark Winges.