Music Meets Drama

Among my most treasured items is a packet of letters, Christmas cards and birthday cards from my Grandma Shimeta.  The envelopes and letters are tied together with a ribbon.  They represent my communication with my Grandma from my college years until I was married.  There in her shaky penmanship she tells me about her garden, fruit trees in her yard, my cousins, aunts and uncles, her neighbors, which people stopped by her house for a visit and stayed for dinner and what she would be doing for any given holiday.  Her word usage and verb conjugations are, if nothing else, creative as English was her sixth language and she only had an eighth grade education.  Yet, as I read them I can see her sitting at her kitchen table writing, smell the food she may have cooked for lunch or dinner and imagine being in her presence or staying in her warm, inviting home.  Those pieces of paper, my Grandma’s letters, are my history with her. Letters……hand written letters ...

The 19 th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified 96 years ago today, August 18, 1920.  This is the amendment that guarantees the rights for all Americans to vote regardless of their sex.  YES! Celebrate ladies and gentlemen, yet, keep in mind this Constitutional amendment did not happen overnight.  Strong men and women believed in and fought for the suffragette movement.  They never lost sight of their ultimate goal, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” During the mid 1700s women were allowed to vote in certain states.  Slowly from the 1770s through to the 1790s, states began to rescind those rights.  The United States Constitutional Convention of 1787 allowed that women’s voting rights would be left to the individual states. In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony convened the first convention for women’s rig...

This summer has brought us an abundance of political news I am sure most of us would rather ignore.  Our wish may have been that we could escape all of it for the joys and freedom of vacation time.  During the hot, humid days of July and now early August, announcements and news about women in the arts have lit up my computer screen.  Creativity, digging in with determination and bold, daring decisions initiated new opportunities for performances of women’s music!  From Vancouver, British Columbia came the announcement that the Allegra Chamber Orchestra , an all female group, will be showcasing women composers. Five women conductors will be leading the  Sao Paulo Symphonic Orchestra in Brazil.  In England, the  London Festival of American Music featured all women composers.  There is an all female electronic music festival in San Francisco .   Dr. Julia Mortyakova , pianist, of the Mississippi University for Women,...

The setting….1944 ….Leonia, New Jersey….the Biscaye home.  The dinner guests that evening were Gena Branscombe and her husband, John Ferguson Tenney.  Ruth Biscaye, for many years a loyal member of the Branscombe Choral, was preparing dinner for her friend and respected conductor.  Ruth’s children, Pierre and Peggie, had attended the many Choral concerts at Town Hall and the Broadway Tabernacle Church.  Among the family’s prized musical possessions was sheet music autographed by Miss Branscombe with one dedicated to Pierre and Peggie.  Most prized, an autographed original manuscript for a choral arrangement of “There was a King of Liang.” That night at dinner Miss Branscombe gave one of her conducting batons to Pierre and another to Peggie.  These batons had led the Choral in one of their concerts that their mother sang!  Fast forward 70 years, all the above items still exist and thanks to Pierre and Peggie, they are in my possession....

Research.....that daunting word when you are a student knowing you have a paper due or a presentation to give.  Hours spent in the library going through materials and old books.  Or, research could be a scientist spending countless hours, days and years creating experiments that hopefully will lead to a breakthrough in medicine.  As researchers we gather all we have read and learned in the hours of reading and experimenting to create a paper, presentation and an announcement that will change the world. Life experience is research, also.   With knowledge and facts you have accumulated over your time on this earth, you can put yourself in a setting, observe your surroundings, imagine a by-gone era then try to connect the dots of facts, scrutinize details and come up with an actual retelling of a happening.  That may sound weird, yet, it works. Recently my colleague and friend, Dr. Laurine Elkins Marlow, along with her husband, Bill, and I made a trip...

November and December of 2015 will be the months remembered for the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.  As a nation, we mourn and sympathize with the country of France and the state of California.  Social media lit up with pictures of Paris and San Bernardino, expressions of sympathy, pictures of the French flag, quotes from politicians, religious, and philosophical leaders.  Our hearts go out to all affected by these horrible acts and to those who survived. Multiple times on Facebook appeared a quote from American composer/conductor, Leonard Bernstein.  In reply to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Bernstein wrote a letter to be included in the New York Philharmonic programs that weekend.  The quote: “We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime.  But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rathe...

Women Composers………………. What a pleasure it was in early September of this year to read that young Jessy McCabe, a student at the private Twyford Church of England High School in London, England, stood up to exam boards for the A level music tests.  Among the 63 composers listed on the exam, not one of them was a woman nor were women composers listed on the syllabus for course work.  In Miss McCabe’s estimation, something had to be done and it was her responsibility to correct the wrong done to women composers.  She began a journey to change the way advanced music courses were taught.  She received an apology from the exam board and an assurance that women composers would be included in her music classes.  This young lady had taken a course entitled, “Fearless Futures” which raised the subject of gender inequality.  Her eyes were opened to the role of sexism in all facets of our everyday life.  With her determination to see an end to this so...