“In May 2016, when details were announced of Composing the Island, the huge festival celebrating the century of music written by Irish composers following the 1916 Rising, the negative reaction was swift,” writes Michael Dervan in Wednesday’s (3/14) Irish Times (Dublin). “The big issue was the under-representation of female composers.… Composers Jane Deasy and Siobhán Cleary fronted a movement and [called] it Composing the Feminists,” since renamed Sounding the Feminists. “Last Wednesday [Dublin National Concert Hall Chief Executive Simon Taylor] joined Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan to reveal details of a five-year, multi-strand, EUR 20,000-a-year initiative that will embrace the work and ideals of Sounding the Feminists…. The National Concert Hall and Sounding the Feminists will co-curate a chamber music programme [that] ‘will seek to reveal the work of female composers and highlight women who have been active but hidden as composers over the centuries.’ ” Also planned are a commissioning project and a program focusing on “the diverse range of works of female artists working in today’s contemporary music space…. Sounding the Feminists has taken on a much wider brief. It plans to work on behalf of ‘composers, performers, songwriters, sound artists, educators, musicologists, administrators, promoters, sound engineers.’ ”
Posted March 19, 2018
