Composers – Mystic World

ENCANTO COMPOSERS, WHITE LOTUS & MORE WIN ASCAP COMPOSERS’ CHOICE AWARD AS 2022 ASCAP SCREEN MUSIC AWARDS LAUNCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA @ASCAP

Mary T. Duncan — Mon, 02 May 2022 14:03:00 +0000

Composers awarded by ASCAP for Loki, Only Murders in the Building and The morning show Join ASCAP Experience Hit Streaming Series Panel on May 5

NEW YORK, May 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Honoring composers whose music elevates the magic of the moving image, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers today reveals the winners of the ASCAP Screen Music Awards 2022. The event is taking place May 2-5 on social media @ASCAP and @ASCAPScreen on Instagram and opens with the winners of the coveted 2022 ASCAP Composers Choice Award.

The ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards are the only honors of their kind among American performing rights organizations – winners are chosen by the community of ASCAP composers and songwriters. Selected from an incredibly talented group of nomineesthe 2022 winners have created the music for an Academy Award-winning musical animated film, a motion picture documentary examining the history of Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Massacre, a satirical comedy-drama series, and a an intergalactic adventure game:

Film Music of the Year: Encanto – Germaine Franco
Documentary music of the year: Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street – amanda jones
TV Music of the Year: The White Lotus – Cristobal Tapia de Veer
TV theme of the year: The White Lotus – Cristobal Tapia de Veer
Video Game of the Year Score: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart – Wataru Hokoyama

The 2022 ASCAP Screen Music Awards reflect the new golden age of streaming television, with composers from many of the past year’s hit series among the winners. They include Bear McCreary for his score for a stunning sci-fi streamer Foundation, Jung Jae Il, 23 years old and Min Ju Park for their work on the megahit record squid game and Lorne Balfe for his musical prowess featured in the two fantasy adventure shows The wheel of time and drama miniseries Sick. From Best Streaming Movies winners, Marius de Vries is recognized for his score on an Oscar-winning film CODAand Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell win their first ASCAP Screen Award for their music in the documentary Billie Eilish: The world is a bit blurry.

In other higher categories, Best Box Office Film go to Michael Giacchino for his epic score in box office history Spider-Man: No Coming Homeand industry giant David Vanacore is named overall winner for Most played themes and underscores for his work on shows including Survivor, naked and scared and Hell’s Kitchen. Composers Matthew Hawkins, Mauritius “m.0.” jackson and Neil Martin bring back home Best Network TV Series for their main theme for NCISwhile John Sereda won Best Cable TV Series for the music of the historical drama When the heart calls you.

ASCAP experience will be the host”Main Stream Music: Composing for TV in the age of streaming”, a special ASCAP Screen Music Awards session to close the festivities on May 5 to 3 p.m. ET/ 12:00 PT. Premiering on ASCAP’s YouTube channel, the panel will feature composers from hit streaming series Carter Burwell (The morning show), Nathalie Holt (Loki) and Siddhartha Khosla (Only murders in the building). ASCAP Screen Music Award winners will explore how composers have contributed to the incredible cultural impact of streaming series during the pandemic. More information about the ASCAP experience is available at www.ascapexperience.com.

Throughout the four-day social media celebration, the ASCAP Screen Music Awards will feature exclusive behind-the-scenes videos, tips, acceptance speeches and other surprises from the winning music creators. From 12 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. PT on from May 2 to May 5friends, fans and peers can join in the festivities via @ASCAP on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and @ASCAPScreen on Instagram, using the hashtag #ASCAPAwards.

The full list of winners is available on the ASCAP website: www.ascap.com/screenawards22.

About ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a professional organization comprised of songwriters, composers, and music publishers of all types of music. ASCAP’s mission is to license and promote the music of its members and foreign affiliates, to obtain equitable remuneration for the public performance of their works, and to distribute the royalties it collects on the basis of these executions. ASCAP members write the world’s most loved music, and ASCAP has pioneered the efficient licensing of this music to hundreds of thousands of companies who use it to add value to their business – from bars, restaurants and retail to radio, television and cable, internet, mobile services and more. The ASCAP license provides an effective solution for companies to legally perform ASCAP music while respecting the right of songwriters and composers to be paid fairly. With more than 850,000 members representing more than 16 million copyrighted works, ASCAP is the global leader in performance royalties, songwriter services and advocacy and the only organization American Performing Rights (PRO) owned and governed by its member authors and publishers. Learn more and stay in touch at www.ascap.comon Twitter and instagram @ASCAP and on Facebook.

ASCAP-SOURCE

Composers reshape Ornette Coleman’s jazz

Mary T. Duncan — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 17:37:40 +0000

Bang on a Can had big plans for 2020.

Before the pandemic hit, this classical music collective was busy planning its most ambitious festival in New York City: a three-day event called “Long Play,” with acts spread across multiple venues in Brooklyn.

Going beyond their legendary one-day marathons, Bang on a Can signaled new ambitions and went hand-in-hand with other major avant-garde parties like the Big Ears Festival in Tennessee.

Of course, these designs have been plowed. So Bang on a Can responded with agility and speed by commissioning artists from those scuttled dates to write solo pieces that were premiered online. These “pandemic solos”, as they are called, have become a tradition in their own right. (Some of them popped up last year at the collective’s summer festival.)

Still, there was a sense of something lost.

“We had this gigantic idea of how to extend the marathon to Long Play,” David Lang, the composer and co-founder of Bang on a Can, told The New York Times in April 2020. “I’m sure we will do it again, if the world ever returns to normal.

Now that’s normal – enough – for another try. Long Play hits New York this weekend at seven venues in downtown Brooklyn, from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening. There are some household names on the lineup, but also ones that suggest Bang on a Can has its ears open to the work of young artists. (Friday nightJeff Tobias’ sets and the Dither Guitar Quartet offer some of that generational variety.)

The festival won’t be a retread of the 2020 lineup. “Mostly it’s new stuff,” Lang said in an interview. And a sparkling climax comes at the end, Sunday night: an in-depth, multi-layered reimagining of saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman’s 1959 album “The Shape of Jazz to Come.” The performance will feature a band led by Coleman’s son, Denardo, who held the drum chair in his father’s bands for several decades (including in “I haven’t been where I left” a play that the elder Coleman, who died in 2015, wrote and sometimes performed with the Bang on a Can All-Stars).

This weekend’s version of “Shape” will also feature a 20-person ensemble, led by Awadagin Pratt and playing new arrangements of all six compositions from the album. These were written by a dizzyingly diverse list of artists – including singer and electronic virtuoso Pamela Z (who arranged “Lonely Woman”) and orchestral and big band composer David Sanford (who took the boppish “Chronology”).

“There are all these threads running through the festival,” Lang said. “Sons of young composers, and sons of dead composers. And threads of modernist music and threads of free jazz.

The idea is that the public can follow their own stylistic predilections. “But all of these threads lead to this play and this concert,” Lang noted. “We designed some of the concerts to interfere with other concerts; nothing interferes with this concert.

To prepare for this highlight of the festival, Denardo Coleman rehearsed his own group of players every week. On a recent afternoon, at a fashionable living and rehearsal space near Manhattan’s Penn Station, he drilled the band, now called Ornette Expressions, through the album’s six tracks, twice.

Although the music comes from “Shape”, the musicians come from different generations. Guitarist James Blood Ulmer and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma both played with Coleman’s father in the 1970s. at Ornette Coleman only in the early 2000s; he was already a leading figure in the contemporary jazz scene, and quickly struck up a relationship with one of the great avant-garde melodists in the field.

The set is completed by two up-and-coming musicians: saxophonist Lee Odom and trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr. The first time they all played one of the compositions, “Peace”, they got a little closer to the original , an emotionally complex composition. work that manages to be both dismal and finger snapping.

After a break – and after Moran had to leave – the melody took a turn, Roney plugging his trumpet into a wah-wah pedal. This time, his electric trumpet lines were woven around Odom’s acoustic and prayerful alto saxophone playing: even more sought-after and passionate.

“We’re doing our arrangement right now,” Denardo Coleman said after the take ended, though he added that “maybe it’s not like that” during Sunday’s concert. It may be different because on the day of this rehearsal, he had just received the finished arrangement. And much of the balance between his group and the sinfonietta remained to be established.

In a telephone interview, Z stated that “everyone was invited to write for this sinfonietta”. There was “a little side note,” she added, saying to “also leave room for the whole Denardo set to jump in, here and there.”

When arranging “Lonely Woman” – perhaps Ornette Coleman’s most famous tune – she aligned the work to her own electronic music. “I played with music the same way I play with sampled audio. I really stretched it and compressed it.

Yet his contribution is entirely acoustic – unlike many of his solo sets. “It starts with really high harmonics on the strings and vibrations in the bow,” Z said. played on a tuba. So I just had a lot of fun, playing with time.

This is exactly what Denardo Coleman was hoping for. “The way my dad would have approached it would have been for everyone to have an equal stake,” he said. “That means he wasn’t just the frontman and everyone was there to make it sound good. If you had an idea, you could take it.

Hence, according to Coleman, the freedom of each arranger to work with the original tunes.

“It wasn’t like we were saying, ‘OK, just orchestrate the song as it is,'” he said. “They can rebuild, deconstruct, flip, whatever. The melody – the composition – is only a starting point. It just takes you into another territory. And that other territory is what it’s really about.

Young Brantford Composers Win International Songwriting Competition

Mary T. Duncan — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 23:21:43 +0000

Two Brantford children are published composers after winning an international songwriting competition.

Hudson Heikoop, 10, and Céline Prygiel, 8, were recognized for their talents at the International Festival of Music Composition for Young Children in March. They both won first place in their category in Eastern Canada.

“It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to create something good, but it’s worth it,” said Heikoop, who has been playing the piano for three years.

Heikoop also came in first internationally, while Prygiel came in second, competing against over 37,000 entrants from Canada, the United States, Singapore and Malaysia.

“It’s fun that you can do any song you want,” Heikoop said.

Both are students of Brantford music teacher Heather Corbett Tuttle, who helped them compose their songs.

Heikoop’s composition, “Sandy Sea Shore”, was inspired by the sound of crashing waves and the texture of sand. It took about six weeks to complete.

“I said a word and Miss Heather took the closest notes and ended up doing a beat,” Heikoop said. “When you put it all together with all the notes, it was pretty cool.”

Corbett Tuttle said Heikoop and Prygiel used compositional techniques like cryptics.

“It’s like being Sherlock Holmes, there’s a code to find those letters and match them up and it creates a song,” explained Corbett Tuttle.

Prygiel has been playing the piano for two years and composed the song “Sister’s Love”, written for her younger sister, Bianca.

“I’m very, very, very proud of them,” said Corbett Tuttle, who coincidentally lives on the same street as the young composers.

The winning compositions are published on the Superscore app.

The world has lost 6 revolutionary composers in one year. How LA, and only LA, pays homage | Entertainment

Mary T. Duncan — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:03:36 +0000

LOS ANGELES — When Harrison Birtwistle died last week at 87, he became the sixth pioneering composer to rise to prominence in the 1960s that we’ve lost in less than nine months. This uncompromising British modernist, together with the Netherlands’ most important composer, Louis Andriessen, and the Americans Frederic Rzewski, George Crumb, Alvin Lucier and William Kraft, helped create revolutionary ways of making, performing, distributing and consider the music.

They are far from the last of their generation of rebels after the Second World War. In America, we still have Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Joan Tower, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick, William Bolcom, Adolphus Hailstork, La Monte Young and many others – all in their eighties and indispensable.

Even so, the consequence of the current loss is huge and difficult to deal with as little of their music is part of the regular performing, recording or broadcast feed, with the exception of Birtwistle in Britain. . Apart from local memorials, there has also been no widespread recognition of their importance, let alone homage to their importance. The exception is LA

In Los Angeles, there has been illuminating attention culminating last week in the splendid rendition by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal timpanist, Joseph Pereira, of Kraft’s solo percussion piece “Encounters I: Soliloquy at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. “Encounters” was added to the Green Umbrella concert by the Kraft-founded LA Phil New Music Group.

Three days earlier, across the street from Colburn School, Piano Spheres, with the services of 18 pianists, staged a six-hour appreciation of Rzewski, a spectacular composer, pianist and improviser who revolutionized practice contemporary with the piano. A week before that, the LA Phil’s “Noon to Midnight” new music festival at Disney included a mesmerizing set of the first volume of Crumb’s celestial “Makrokosmos” series played by pianist Nic Gerpe, as well as a superb performance of Andriessen’s “De Staat”, a majestically aggressive orchestral scream to the place of music in a society ardently directed by John Adams.

Last month, the Monday Evening Concerts accompanied Lucier in an evening in memory of a composer who sought sound and meaning within everyday life. He turned to tables, chairs, teapots and the innards of a piano to unlock acoustic secrets. Even more surprisingly, it turned inside its brain to share the sound of its waves, which can do a thing or two to a listener’s brain.

Putting it all together is a brain drain in itself.

The Green Umbrella memoriam to kraft reminded us that he was not only a wonderful composer, whose music is rarely heard, but also the most important member of his generation to follow John Cage’s edict: “Percussion is a revolution!” Kraft’s hard-hitting revolution was surprisingly widespread. As principal percussionist and legendary timpanist of the LA Phil, he championed new music and had an outsized influence on the importance of the modern orchestra, reminding us that all great music is the product of its time and its place.

Kraft’s “Contextures: Riots—Decade ’60”, written for the LA Phil in 1967 and reflecting Watts’ uprising two years earlier, began the orchestra’s goal of acting as an agent of social activism , for which the LA Phil is now a famous international leader. The piece also follows the noble example of Beethoven.

There’s no better example of the kind of resonance that Kraft’s drumming promotion (now a given in modern music) has had than Ellen Reid’s “Fear l Release” for four drums placed around the room for Tuesday’s schedule. Reid, who has become a leading voice in her millennial generation, happened to co-curate the program with violinist Pekka Kuusisto, who opened it with a stunning premiere of Reid’s “Desiderium” for solo violin. .

Like Kraft, Rzewski insisted on political necessity. The piano was a revolution. His most famous piece, an hour-long series of variations on Will never be defeated!” used compositional and keyboard techniques from Bach to the present day to create such excitement that few contemporary music has.

The Piano Spheres occasion was a sad, but catchy appreciation of Rzewski. The series had invited the composer to perform and arranged for him to commission a new piece, which he completed shortly before he died suddenly of heart failure in June. The first part featured a varied collection of 14 works by Rzewski played by mostly young pianists in Colburn’s courtyard, which was transformed into a beer garden on a cool, windy afternoon. Some of the performances I’ve heard include Daniel Newman-Lessler’s lush theatrics in “Rubinstein in Berlin,” in which the performer recounts a shocking incident from Arthur Rubinstein’s memoir while illustrating it at the piano, and the exploration by Andreas Foivos Apostolou of the disturbed interiority of a nocturne by Rzewski. .

Besides the premiere of the pleasantly quirky new suite (conventionally for Rzewski, and unconventionally for everyone) in four movements, each played by a different pianist from Piano Spheres (Vicki Ray, Gerpe, Aron Kallay and Gloria Cheng), two pianists guests were on hand with works written for them in 2020. Rzewski cultivated a reputation as a curmudgeon, but as Lisa Moore showed in “Amoramaro” and Ursula Oppens in “Friendship,” the composer lovingly captured the passion in the first and deep strength and musicality in the last. A long-time champion of Rzewski, Oppens made the first classic recording of “People United”.

“I don’t think there’s a serious pianist who hasn’t played Rzewski,” Moore told the audience, describing his dedication to the composer. As a former Bang on a Can All-Stars pianist, she was also well qualified to talk about Andriessen’s impact on contemporary music. The iconoclastic Dutch composer, who proudly chose to work outside of mainstream musical institutions (and who was friends with Rzewski), proved an inimitable musical and entrepreneurial influence on Bang on a Can founders David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon. You need look no further for that than in the bright, spiny instrumental sound of Lang’s arrangement of Meredith Monk’s “Double Fiesta” at Tuesday’s Green Umbrella.

Like Andriessen, Crumb, too, had an unflinching hold on young composers. Gerpe’s magical “Makrokosmos” was a repeat of the Crumb tribute he staged in March at Monk Space. In this, a dozen composers have contributed new pieces for solo piano to play alongside Crumb’s dozen or so zodiac-inspired “fantasy pieces”.

Lucier has become a pole of attraction for the hippest young composers interested in the interiority of sound. Hildur Guðnadóttir included Lucier’s triangular solo, “Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra”, in his LA Phil film music program 12 days before the 90-year-old composer died in December. “Silver Tramway” also performed at the Monday Night Concert Tribute to a packed house at 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Los Angeles.

The main room was the first on the west coast of “Palimpsest”. Written in 2014, it featured soprano Joan La Barbara (for whom it was written) reading an anecdote over and over as it was slowly distorted by electronic commentary. At first you think, “That’s enough, this can’t go on.” But if you know that Lucier is celebrated “I’m sitting in a room” you know it will continue – and I hope you will too. You do. It begins a journey in which sound distortion leads first to perceptual distortion and then, after about an hour, to mental clarity.

But who is crazy about Harry? This is how Birtwistle was affectionately known in Britain, though the affection did not always extend much further to a general audience who often found his scores inscrutable. His thorny operas, his greatest works, are weighty but worth it in their translation of harsh reality into primordial mythical import.

Tributes in Britain are expected to pour in. America, on the other hand, has shown little appetite for Twig despite some strong supporters. The late patron of Los Angeles Betty Freeman called him the greatest composer of the 20th century and commissioned “The Last Supper”, Birtwistle’s last opera, which had its premiere in Berlin in 2000. Christopher Koelsch, the director of the Los Angeles Opera, has expressed immense admiration for Birtwistle. But don’t expect to see “The Last Supper” here or any Birtwistle opera in America anytime soon. They’re expensive and difficult to produce, and they’re not really good at the box office. Freeman, who died in 2009, is no longer around to foot the bill.

She commissioned Birtwistle’s fierce yet sonorous piano concerto “Antiphonies” for the LA Phil. The stellar 1996 premiere, conducted by Pierre Boulez and featuring Mitsuko Uchida as a soloist, was coldly received at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This is the last major work by Birtwistle in Los Angeles that I can remember.

Although the composer with the most institutional support (if mainly in Britain), Harry remains the special case of the six. Young composers do not follow his style. It takes special performers to make his music as palatable as Boulez, Uchida and Oliver Knussen have shown. But I suspect the example of his fierce independence will make him grow over time.

Maybe it already is. A Generation X Festival presented and curated by Thomas Adès – who, at 52, must now be considered Britain’s foremost composer – paid a moving tribute to Birtwistle at the end of the first program on Friday evening by playing an exquisite piano miniature of Birtwistle, “Oockooing Bird”.

The LA Phil is surely the only orchestra in the world to have programmed these six composers of the great post-war generation not only over the years but also this very season. For this legacy, thank you Bill Kraft.

Concert emerges post-pandemic, will honor composers who shone in brief lives – Chicago Tribune

Mary T. Duncan — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 02:50:00 +0000

Some of the most beautiful music sung today was created by composers who unfortunately lived short lives. The Michael Teolis Singers will honor 15 of them, spanning five centuries, when they perform “Gone Too Soon,” May 7 at 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church of Oak Park, 324 N. Oak Park Ave.

“We had planned to do a concert in 2020 commemorating the end of World War II,” Teolis said. It included a piece for solo soprano.

“I had met Josefien Stoppelenburg, a Dutch soprano, who lives in the Chicago area. I asked her if she would agree to play the solo role,” says Teolis. “We were all set to leave in March 2020 when everything shut down.”

He kept postponing this gig but eventually decided to go in another direction. But Teolis still wanted Stoppelenburg to perform with the group, so he looked for a piece for choir, piano and soloist. He located a work by Franz Schubert entitled “Miriam’s Song of Triumph”.

Stoppelenburg said the piece would match his voice perfectly.

“It’s a very exciting piece and, to be honest, ‘I didn’t know that until he mentioned it,’ said Wilmette resident Stoppelenburg. “It’s a very powerful narrative piece, so I’m very excited to play it with this band.”

She reported that the work tells the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt through the eyes of Miriam. “It starts very happy,” said the soloist. “She said, ‘Come, let us celebrate and praise the Lord.’ And then it tells the whole story of the Israelites trying to escape and the Pharaoh and his army following them. This feeling of war, escape, relief and panic – all these intense feelings – and Schubert depicts them all as if by magic. You can almost see them.

“Miriam’s Song of Triumph” is about 20 minutes long.

“The piece ends with a very compelling fugue,” Stoppelenburg said.

The next step for Teolis was to find other pieces that would work with the Schubert.

It occurred to the conductor that Schubert had died when he was only 31 years old. “I started to think of other pieces and composers that would amuse the singers and the audience,” recalls Teolis. It was then that he invented the concept “Gone Too Soon”.

“I think it’s a very fascinating theme because there are so many composers for whom you think about what would have happened if they had lived longer. In which direction would they have gone? Stoppelenburg noted.

Teolis chose works by Mozart, Giovanni Pergolesi and George Gershwin, and diversified the program by adding black composers, including Scott Joplin.

“Then I came across this arrangement of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ by John Lennon,” Teolis said.

The songs will be sung in five languages: English, German, French, Latin and Italian.

Teolis admitted that he doesn’t know anyone who does the kind of programming he does.

The conductor recalled that he once created a program called “Grand Dames of American Music.”

“I did seventeen female composers in one gig,” he said.

Teolis praised the versatility of its singers, chosen by audition. None of them are paid and neither is Teolis.

The pianist is paid, as well as other musicians who are added. There will be a string ensemble and a percussionist for the next concert. Twenty-six singers will perform.

For 15 years, Teolis has devoted many hours to creating the two main concerts that the group gives each year and rehearsing with them for two hours each Sunday.

He explains that he does it because “it’s a passion. There’s so much music that’s not being heard that I think people will really appreciate.

Tickets for “Gone Too Soon” are $22; $17 for seniors and students, in advance; $25 and $20 at the door. For more information, visit MTSingers.org.

Myrna Petlicki is a freelance journalist for Pioneer Press.

The choral society presents a concert dedicated to female composers

Mary T. Duncan — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 13:07:07 +0000

The Little Traverse Choral Society will celebrate the contributions of women to music by presenting its annual spring concerts on Friday, April 29 and Saturday, April 30 in Petoskey and Harbor Springs.

Both concerts will be devoted to works by female composers.

Among the works presented will be the elegant “Abendfeier in Venedig” by the German composer Clara Schumann, the madrigals by the American composer Emma Lou Diemer and “I will be Earth” by Gwyneth Walker.

The Friday night concert will be at 7:30 p.m. at Petoskey United Methodist Church. The Saturday afternoon concert will be at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church in Harbor Springs. Tickets will be available at the door.

The choir is under the direction of Adam Boyce of Petoskey, with the accompaniment of Ellen Kendall of Charlevoix. Violinist Ann Marie Jones will also be featured.

Two concerts to highlight female baroque composers

Mary T. Duncan — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:36:00 +0000

A concert dedicated to female Baroque composers is a rare treat, and this weekend Camerata del Sol will present two such concerts with music from Italy, Germany, France and Belgium. Although they may not have enjoyed the fame of Bach or Handel in later centuries, these women were accomplished and renowned in their day and their music increasingly found its way into programs and recordings. . The composers presented are Isabella Leonarda, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Elisabeth de la Guerre, Wilhelmina (Margrave of Bayreuth) and Leonora Duarte.

Two El Paso musicians who have solo roles in the concerts, soprano Heather Dials and pianist and harpsichordist Joseph Lecher, spoke with Zoom’s Intermezzo host Leora Zeitlin.

“Caccini and Strozzi turned out to be the most prolific – even today – of all female composers,” Dials said. “They wrote music for themselves [to perform]. They were both famous singers,” she said, adding that Caccini was the first woman to write an opera. Dials will sing two works by Caccini and Strozzi.

Lecher, who will accompany the concert on the harpsichord, will also be a soloist in a concerto by Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great. He explained that the work was not discovered until the 1930s and a more complete version was found in 1997. Despite scholarly controversy over whether Wilhelmine wrote it, Lecher said: “It’s a great concerto. It’s a great addition to the repertoire we have as keyboard players, and I think it should be played by a lot more ensembles.

Pianist and harpsichordist Joseph Lecher

Listen to this extensive conversation about composers, emotion in Baroque music and performance style, improvisation in Baroque music, and more. Two Baroque specialists have come to Las Cruces as guest artists, theorbo player Hector Torres and Baroque violinist Diego Villamil. The concerts will be Friday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the El Paso Women’s Club and Saturday, February 24 at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church in Las Cruces. A pre-concert lecture on Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi will be given by Kathleen Key one hour before each concert.