By Annie Brown
For Asbury University’s music department, this fall semester marks another step toward equality in the academic world of performance.
On Sept. 25, the university orchestra will perform Amy Beach’s “Symphony in E Minor” and a movement from Florence Price’s “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America” in the newly renovated Jameson Recital Hall. This will not only be the first full orchestra concert in Jameson since the renovation but also the first orchestra concert at Asbury University in over a decade that features works written by women.
Orchestra director Nathan Miller and strings instructor Meg Saunders decided to perform Beach’s “Symphony in E Minor,” also called the “Gaelic Symphony,” and Price’s music in order to bring more women composers into Asbury’s orchestra repertoire. They noticed their past programming repetitively featured white male composers and wanted to celebrate a more diverse range of composers through a concert themed “Amplify.”
“This year especially, there’s been a resurgence in orchestras all over the country programming more diverse composers,” said Saunders. “Just having a symphonic work by a woman is something that hasn’t been highlighted at Asbury or even this region for a long time.” According to Saunders, it is not uncommon for an experienced musician to have never played a full symphonic work written by a woman.
“I’ve been in the orchestral setting since I was fourteen, and I find it fascinating that as a violinist, this is the first time I’ve played a symphony written by a woman,” she said. “The fact that we get to experience this together as women is a real thrill. It’s been really cool to be able to refer to the composer as ‘she’ when we’re in rehearsals. That’s something I’ve never said in my career.”
As Asbury’s music department moves forward in the coming years, its hope is to explore a more diverse range of composers and help inspire its own women musicians by adding more women composers to its repertoire. “I want [female music students] to feel empowered and for them to feel equality everywhere, not just in places we think, like the workplace, but in music. We are all equal; it’s a level playing field,” said Saunders.
Sophomore violinist and music major Ali Stiefel had a similar reaction to working on a piece by a woman. “I think it’s cool we’re making a point to play Amy Beach. It’s not something you hear every day. Beethoven — you hear that every day. [Performing Beach’s music is] inspirational. As a woman, you realize composition is something you can aspire to. It’s a need that can be filled, and it can be filled by you.”
“I hope we get to highlight more women composers and non-white composers to emphasize that everyone can contribute to the classical music world,” Saunders said. “We’re looking at women composers, African-American composers — we want to highlight those who have been overshadowed by their ‘dead and white’ colleagues. There are also many contemporary women composers that are currently writing for orchestral settings, chamber settings, and solo pieces that we wish to highlight in the future.”
“Especially in a university world, we can get stuck in our ways, almost to an aggravating extent, regardless of what it is,” Stiefel said. “Opening our horizons to newer music and to maybe even less known music with women composers would definitely be a cool move and would set Asbury apart from other universities. It would give us a special touch that other universities don’t have.”
Currently, Asbury’s orchestra is the only university orchestra in the central Kentucky area set to perform a symphonic work by a woman composer this year.
