Misfit City

From March to May, women’s music collective Scordatura continue their mission to present, perform and illuminate work by female composers, via a series of monthly concerts in London or Oxford.

The March date in London is “an evening of wind chamber music from some of Europe’s most exciting female composers.” Living composers will be represented by Judith Weir’s ‘Mountain Airs’ (a free adaptation of two traditional Scottish melodies, which dates back to 1988); but there’ll also be wind quintets by a pair of bold and prolific twentieth-century French composers (Claude Arrieu and Hedwige Chrétien) as well as by English serialist grande-dame Elisabeth Lutyens.

 
In addition, there’ll be a performance of ‘Trio For Winds’ by the late Prague-based Scottish composer Geraldine Mucha, whose work was obscured for much of her lifetime (partly due to Cold War politics and partly due to so much of her energy and social value having being subsumed into other work as chatelaine and foundation head for her talented father-in-law, the Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha).

 
In April, three Scordatura members – cellist and artistic director Rachel Watson, clarinettist Poppy Beddoe, and pianist Cecily Lock – will be playing a set of chamber trios in Oxford. Two are by living composers – ‘Arenas d’un Tiempo’ by Cuban-Afro-American Tania León and ‘Canta, Canta!’ by Thea Musgrave.

The remainder are historical – ‘Passacaglia on an Old English Tune’ (by the slim-catalogued but accomplished post-Impressionist Rebecca Clarke); ‘Sonata for Clarinet and Cello’ (by the smart, witty and superbly spirited Phyllis Tate); ‘Andante for Clarinet and Piano’ (by the elegant twentieth-century neoclassicist Alice Mary Smith); and ‘Three Pieces for Cello and Piano’ (by Nadia Boulanger, whose exemplary work as a teacher of other composers from Philip Glass and Elliott Carter to Aaron Copland tends to overshadow her own compositional reputation).

 
Scordatura return to London (and the Old Church) in May for an evening of cello ensemble music. This will include pieces composed and performed by a guest – Manchester cellist Polly Virr (another latter-day tech-savvy polydisciplinary, who works with Rachel Watson in flashmob ensemble The Street Orchestra of London and whose work outside of the immediate classical sphere covers the string loop pedal duo Täpp as well as work with indie-folk band Ideal Forgery plus various Manchester singer-songwriters).

Landscape- and travel-inspired, Polly’s pieces include standard playing and cello-body percussion plus occasional extended technique and voice, in a similar manner to other post-classical/pop-friendly solo cellists like Laura Moody, Philip Sheppard, Zosia Jagodzinska and Serena Jost. She also draws additional inspiration from post-classical electronic dance artists such as Phaeleh. I’ve pasted in a couple of her Soundcloud shots below.

 
The other items on the programme include the Cello Quartet by Grażyna Bacewicz (a violin soloist and onetime Boulanger student who became one of the first internationally-recognised Polish female composers) and ‘Chant’ by the humble, undersung Scottish composer and multi-instrumentalist Marie Dare (for whom I’ve found a lone biography here) As with the other two concerts, there are a couple of pieces by living women, both of them cello quartets – the slow windings of Tina Davidson’s ‘Dark Child Sings’, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s ‘Las Sombras de los Apus’ (an early piece rising from dark tones to swarming explosions and dance rhythms, balancing – as with most of her music – the European and Latina aspects of her own multicultural heritage).

 
Dates as follows:

• ‘The Grand Tour: European Music for Wind Quintet’ – The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England, Sunday 25th March 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
• ‘Scordatura at St Michael’s’ – St Michael & All Angels Church, 33 Lonsdale Road, Summertown, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX2 7ES, England, Friday 20th April 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
• ‘Celli! Music for Cello Ensemble’ – The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England, Saturday 19th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

 
* * * * * * * *

UPDATE, 16th March 2018 – …and, if you can’t wait that long, I’ve just found out that the people behind the London New Wind Festival are staging a London evening of new music by women composers, as part of International Woman’s Month; a couple of evenings before the first of the Scordatura concerts.

A loose on/off quintet of Simon Desorgher (flutes), Catherine Pluygers (oboes), Ian Mitchell (clarinets), Alan Tomlinson (trombone), and Robert Coleridge (piano) will be playing the following pieces:

Yuko Ohara – Rising Eels (for oboe & trombone)
Margaret Lucy Wilkins – “366” (for solo trombone)
Dorothee Eberhardt – Campion (for bass clarinet & piano) (UK premiere)
Violeta Dinescu – Lichtwellen (for solo B-flat clarinet) (UK premiere)
Michiko Shimanuki – First Snow (for solo piano) (world premiere)
Catherine Pluygers – Japan (for ensemble)
Janet Graham – From Dawn to Dusk (for flute, oboe and piano)
Erika Fox – Remembering the Tango (for flute and piano)
Ming Wang – Die Verwandelten (for solo bass flute)
Enid Luff – The Coming of the Rain (for solo oboe).

London New Wind Festival presents:
‘New Music by Women Composers’
Schott Music Ltd, 48 Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London, WIF 7BB, England
Friday 23rd March 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

This music’s currently so obscure that this is the only soundclip I could find for it…

Tags: Alan Tomlinson, Alice Mary Smith, Catherine Pluygers, Cecily Lock, Claude Arrieu, Dorothee Eberhardt, Elisabeth Lutyens, Enid Luff, ensemble music, Erika Fox, Gabriela Lena Frank, Geraldine Mucha, Grażyna_Bacewicz, Hedwige Chrétien, Ian Mitchell, Janet Graham, Judith Weir, listening to women, Margaret Lucy Wilkins, Marie Dare, Michiko Shimanuki, Ming Wang, music for cello, Nadia Boulanger, Phyllis Tate, Polly Virr, Poppy Beddoe, quartet music, quintet music, Rachel Watson, Rebecca Clarke, Robert Coleridge, Schott Music (venue) - Soho - London, Scordatura Women's Music Collective, Simon Desorgher, St Michael & All Angels Church (venue) - Oxford, Tania León, The Old Church (venue) - Stoke Newington - London, Thea Musgrave, Tina Davidson, trio music, Violeta Dinescu, women of heart and mind, Yuko Ohara