Colleges offering variety of film, music premiering this weekend
Bridgette Redman
Act I: Film explores what comes next after pandemic
When it came time to figure out how his Lansing Community College theater class would tackle their spring performance, Mark Colson wasn’t interested in directing just another regular show translated to Zoom or livestream.
“If we were going to do this, I wanted to test the boundaries of something else,” Colson said.
He and his class started with the idea of devised theater and it grew into an original film that looks forward to what people hope for and expect after the pandemic is over.
College of Music concert to celebrate women musicians
Photo courtesy of the MSU College of Music.
The Michigan State College of Music is hosting a livestream concert event to showcase the works of six women musicians Monday, April 19.
Director Deborah Moriarty hopes the show, “Trailblazers: Celebrating Women in Music,” brings recognition to the women artists featured.
“Women in music have been, for a long time, sort of ignored,” Moriarty said. “Not so much recently, but still, there’s a lot of emphasis … in conservatories and in colleges of music on the traditional music Beethoven, Debussy, Bach and we tend to be a little bit stuck in the past, and when we’re stuck in the past, we don’t really do women composers because they were not given the sort of recognition they should have been given in the past.”
Trailblazing musicians: Honoring women composers
Michigan State University College of Music artists will showcase women musicians who broke barriers in the world of music through a live broadcast event that wraps the 11th season of the Joanne and Bill Church West Circle Series. “Trailblazers: Celebrating Women in Music” premieres at 7:30 p.m., Monday, April 19
on the MSU College of Music Livestream Channel. The broadcast will include new recordings captured at MSU’s Fairchild Theatre.
The concert theme, “Trailblazers,” signifies the courage of women musicians to push forward despite their artistry being ignored or downplayed. Featured works will highlight the contributions and influence women have had in a variety of musical genres and styles. The event weaves together compositions by Amy Beach, Florence Price, Lena McLin, Ann Ronell, Mary Lou Williams and Keiko Abe.
South East Correspondent
A festival celebrating the work of women composers, many of them neglected and even forgotten over the years, is taking place online.
Finding a Voice is now in its fourth year, but this time around there will be no live audiences.
Instead, anyone interested in watching and listening to any of the many performances between now and Monday - International Women s Day - can book tickets for the online broadcasts.
Finding a Voice was founded in 2018 by sisters Róisín and Clíona Maher, who are originally from Clonmel in Co Tipperary and have been working in different sections of the arts for many years.
Clonmelâs Finding a Voice festival, a festival devoted exclusively to music by women, is happening online this year, the only way thatâs possible for it. The great Japanese marimba player Keiko Abe and percussionist/composer Evelyn Glennie are among the names represented in the opening programme performed by Alex Petcu, who will also play a new work by Elaine Agnew.
There will be songs by Pauline Viardot, marking the bicentenary of the birth of the great French singer and composer, for whom Berlioz made the now-dominant version of Gluckâs Orfeo ed Euridice with Orfeo cast as a mezzo-soprano. Thatâs in concert by soprano Kelley Lonergan, actor Aideen Wylde and pianist Gabriela Mayer.