“…Yet the dialogue surrounding the subject of identity contains many pitfalls. Paradoxically, the individual can get lost in the heated conversation that inherently arises around the topic. Oftentimes, that discourse becomes reductive…Reduced to our pronouns, our race, our political affiliation, our religion, our nationality, or whatever category becomes the focus, the individual is blended into the oblivion of a colored bar on a graph or section of a pie chart…”
Read More“The American Songbag is a ragbag of strips, stripes, and streaks of color from nearly all ends of the earth. The melodies and verses presented here are from diverse regions, from varied human characters and communities, and each is sung differently in different places.” - Carl Sandburg
So begins Carl Sandburg’s introduction to his groundbreaking collection of American folk song, The American Songbag. The anthology would redefine American notions of folk music…”
Read More“In the first half of the 20th century, as The Great Migration saw waves of Black Americans journey from South to North, Chicago became an important cultural center for Black American classical music. The combination of a robust independent music infrastructure that developed in the city’s “Black Belt” on the South Side as a result of segregation, and the relative progressiveness of the world-class music conservatories in the Loop that admitted Black students, made Chicago an important mecca for African American classical musicians. Black musicians from all over the country came to study at institutions like the American Conservatory of…”
Read More“I often find the seeds of future festivals buried in the layers of discovery that are unearthed as I research and program each year’s Collaborative Works Festival. This year’s festival, The Song of Chicago, is the result of this very process. CAIC’s first program entirely devoted to the music of Chicago was the opening program of the 2019 Collaborative Works Festival. Entitled The City, the program showcased the work of four of the Windy City’s pre-eminent women composers…”
Read More…Canon is a human creation. It is dangerous to buy into the belief that all of the “great masters” rose into the pantheon of their own accord, simply on their own merit, like some sort of cream rising to the top. The narrative that as the classical music world leans into being more “woke”, we are being relegated to some sort of morass of mediocre music is a destructive fallacy…
Read More“The woman of the future with her broader outlook for greater opportunities will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description...”
— CÉCILE CHAMINADE
When Cécile Chaminade speculated in the Washington Post about the increased scope of possibility for women artists of the future, her optimism would not prove unfounded…
Read MoreThe path of progress is rarely a straight line, and as women’s access to music education increased through the years of the Enlightenment, there remained a resistance to the idea of women’s use of that education in the public sphere. There was a stigma of impropriety associated with women who entered the public sphere as professional musicians…
Read More
