“American composer Anita Owen wrote her biggest hit song, ‘Sweet Bunch of Daisies,’ in 1894,” writes Catherine Womack in Wednesday’s (8/21) Los Angeles Times. “The song became a hit, selling more than a million copies…. If you’ve never heard of Owen or any of the 200-plus songs she composed during her successful career, you’re not alone…. ‘There is this falling away of women artists and artists of color that needs to stop and be corrected,’ says composer Laura Karpman…. In what she calls a ‘small little act of course correction,’ Karpman is premiering an overture Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl that incorporates melodic snippets from patriotic songs by Owen and two other early 20th century American female composers, Mildred Hill and Emily Wood Bower. The new orchestral piece, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and titled ‘All American,’ features percussion instruments crafted out of kitchen tools like baking sheets and meat tenderizers, a nod to the domestic work that historically defined so many women’s lives…. Karpman co-founded the Alliance for Women Film Composers in 2014 [and] has dreams for launching a musicological [project] that would catalog, record and publish forgotten music by female composers from around the world.”
Posted August 22, 2019
