The city of New Haven, Connecticut is proclaiming September 29 “Women Making Music Day” in honor of New Haven Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence Hannah Lash and composer Helen Hagan (1891-1964). Hagan was the first African American woman to graduate from the Yale School of Music, and the New Haven Symphony premiered Hagan’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in 1912. Her grave site at New Haven’s Evergreen Cemetery had been unmarked; on September 29 at 2:00 p.m., the cemetery will hold a dedication ceremony for her new grave marker, with Hannah Lash as one of the speakers. On September 29 at Woolsey Hall, NHSO Music Director William Boughton will lead Lash’s “Biological,” the third section of her two-year commission for the orchestra, the Lash/Voynich Project. Lash is composing a four-movement work inspired by the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The NHSO is premiering each movement separately, with the first two movements already performed in 2015-16; the full piece will be premiered on May 4, 2017.
Posted September 23, 2016
