Music Meets Drama

  Over the years of working on this project, questions about the address of the Branscombe home in Picton were unanswered.   Even the Historical Society could not seem to narrow down the address, though they knew it was West Mary Street.   During our walking tour on the day of the Picton concert, August 15 th , we walked on West Mary stopping in front of 76 West Mary Street.   Liz Driver, who led the walking tour, explained the probability of the house being the home of Gena Branscombe’s family.   Local landmarks were noted yet the question of “was this the Branscombe home?” remained. Several hours later at the “From Picton to the World” concert, Liz met Sheila and Wayne Van Soelen.   Sheila is a cousin of Gena Branscombe’s.   The Van Soelen’s have done extensive research into the Branscombe genealogy.   It was possible that Wayne knew of connection between Gena, her brother Clarence and the Jones family.   With more information at her disp...

  The learning curve for a person when one begins a project, such as The Gena Branscombe Project, is a pretty wide, long and extensive curve. Additional knowledge, for me, was learning about the print publications available during Gena Branscombe’s lifetime.  Articles about Gena appeared in Musical America, which is still in existence, Musical Courier, various New York City newspapers including the New York Times, her hometown newspaper, the Picton Gazette, Musical Leader, The Musician, Musical Narrator, Telegraph and many more.  Published articles about her music and life, her speeches, reviews of performances of her music given by various artists and reviews of her own Branscombe Choral concerts were frequent subjects.  She was met with glowing reviews all around for her songs, her oratorio and her creative and audacious programming of only 20 th century living composers for one of her women’s chorus concerts!   Recently a copy of The American Magazine, O...

The article below, written by John Lyons, pictures The Old Drug Store in downtown Picton, Ontario.  Gena Branscombe's father ran the store as well as having a dentistry office upstairs.  Click on the picture/article to read the history of the Allison and Branscombe families.   #BringingBackBranscombe  

#BringingBackBranscombe  

  Get to know The Gena Branscombe Project’s 2026 Conductor scholarship winner, Valentina Paolucci! She is a rising orchestral conductor and violinist currently based in New York City.   A recent graduate from the Juilliard School with a Masters Degree in Orchestral Conducting, she was awarded the Robert Craft-Igor Stravinsky Conducting Award upon graduation. Valentina is currently a Conducting Fellow with The Chelsea Symphony and Music Director of the NYO-USA Alumni Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. (Valentina with her winner's coffee mug) Valentina spent several weeks this summer at the Domaine Forget Académie internationale de musique et de danse in Saint-Irénée, Quebec being inspired with beautiful music making and learning from world renowned conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kensho Watanabe. The culmination of her weeks of lessons and coachings was the honor of conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain in the final concert.  Completing her weeks in Canada, she quickly lef...

  Receiving this envelope with Dan Ryan’s message to me…..well…there are not enough words to describe how it touched my heart and what it meant to me after many years of working on the music and life of Gena Branscombe.   That envelope held programs from the “From Picton to the World: Bringing Home the Music of Gena Branscombe” concert.  Only after leaving Picton did I realize I had not picked up extra programs for my own archive.  Thanks to Dan’s sister, who was making a trip to New York City, I was handed the envelope!  And, there was this message….which speaks of the very essence of Dan Ryan.  (By the way, Alexis is Dan’s wife and Sagan is their adorable dog.) Working with Dan, my friend and colleague, over the past eight years has been a privilege and blessing.  Dan is a high energy, creative and brilliant ideas person.  He leaves me in wonderment as to how I was blessed to have him as Co-Founder of The Gena Branscombe Project.  It wa...