Music Meets Drama

“Christmas Festival ~ MacDowell Club of Mountain Lakes”  -  a green program held together with gold colored thread.  Delicate and fragile inner pages spell out a concert given by the MacDowell Club chorus conducted by Gena Branscombe.  The concert was presented on Tuesday evening, December 20, 1932 at 8:30 PM at the Community Church House.   The performance was given nearly 85 years ago during the height of the great Depression.  Established in 1896, MacDowell Clubs formed to honor American composer, Edward MacDowell (1860-1908).  At the height of their popularity there were 400 such clubs across the United States.  In the ensuing years the number of clubs has dwindled to only five remaining clubs; Mountain Lakes, New Jersey being one of them. The MacDowell Clubs were community organizations where lectures were presented by renowned people of their day, concerts of piano or vocal literature were performed, some chapters est...

The recent announcement that the opera,  Angel's Bone,  composed by Du Yun had won her the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music is cause for the continuing celebration of women's musical accomplishments. My sincere congratulations go to Du Yun and past Pulitzer Prize winning women composers, Jennifer Higdon (2010), Caroline Shaw (2013), Julia Wolfe (2015), Shulamit Ran (1991), Melinda Wagner (1999) and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1983).  These composers' Pulitzer Prize winning compositions span the musical genres of Violin Concerto, Oratorio, Symphonies, Partita for 8 Voices , Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion and now an opera.  Our assignment as supporters of women composers is to listen to their music, celebrate their works and educate, educate and educate continuously that women composers be heard without gender barriers. Along with the Pulitzer Prize for Music announcement, there have been other articles recently written about and by women composers. ...

As we come to the end of Women’s History Month 2017, for me it has been a month of discovering women composers of the Romantic and Impressionist era.  I made it my goal to go to YouTube each day and find an unknown, to me, woman composer. I started by putting in the name of French composer, Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) in the search area.  I had known her name from my music history classes.  Several times I listened to her Symphony #3 then went on to her Symphony #1 and chamber music .  Over and over I kept asking myself why her symphonies are not performed by all orchestras whether conservatory or professional.  These works are lyrical, full of emotion and major pieces of music that should be performed.  YouTube then brought up composer Dora Pejačević (1885-1923), an Hungarian/Croatian composer.  I listened to her Symphony #4 in F# Minor and her Piano Concerto in G Minor .  Again, the question……….why are her works not perfor...

During the month of March, we acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of women of historical importance and those of today's world who carry the torch to make an impact on our society.  Thousands and thousands of women's names should be added to an honor roll of some sort! The first International Women's Day began here in the United States in 1911.  By 1978, the Sonoma, California school district celebrated a Women's History Week that surrounded International Women's Day on March 8th.  The following year, Sarah Lawrence College held a conference about women's history.  President Jimmy Carter, in 1980, declared the week of March 8th as National Women's History Week.  A year later, Senator Orin Hatch and Representative Barbara Mikulski co-sponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution proclaiming a Women's History Week.  By petitioning Congress in 1987, the National Women's History Project had March declared as National Women's...

With my recent and ongoing research about Miss Branscombe’s life, I have had the pleasure of making new friends in Canada.   Little is known about Gena’s younger years as she did not keep diaries.  There are no records of her activities in the local school.  When I began making contacts in Picton, I found people who would then give me other names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of someone who might have information.  One surprise was being in touch with one of Gena’s relatives!  All of these people were more than willing to help me in my quest for information from over 100 years ago.  One individual, who has been generous beyond what words can express, was willing to make trips to historical societies where their records are not online.  I have received copies of pictures, newspaper articles, family lineage charts, letters and much more.  One cannot offer enough “thank yous” to my new found Picton friends for their help. At t...

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...