GUILFORD — Women composers in the classical tradition are still far less known than they should be, and their works remain rarely performed.
Working to correct that, Friends of Music at Guilford is kicking off this year's “Women in Music” gala fundraiser. The 2013 program, set to begin Saturday, April 6, at 6 p.m., raises support for the organization's current 47th season of concerts.
In addition to a number of donations-only core events intended to make music accessible to the most varied audiences, Friends of Music provides a music enrichment program to its hometown Guilford Central School and provides a concert series to Windham County facilities for seniors as funds allow.
The venue is Joy and John Amidon's contemporary Deck House-designed home, built in 2006-07 on Summit Circle in West Brattleboro, on an elegant and expansive space in a quiet, wooded setting.
The evening's performers are The Variable Winds, a woodwind quintet from Vermont and the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts, on flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. They have been featured in “variable” configurations over the years on Friends of Music programs, most recently as a trio performing a portion of the program at last spring's Women in Music event.
The April 6 program includes the Pastorale, op. 151, by Amy Cheney Beach (1867-1944), the first woman to have a symphony, a piano concerto, and a large choral/orchestral work performed by major American orchestras, among many other notable achievements as a performer and composer.
The Suite for Woodwind Quintet (1952) by Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is considered a miniature masterpiece and will introduce gala attendees to music by the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, who also contributed much to the archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress after marrying Pete Seeger's musicologist-composer father Charles.
Also included is a movement from “Dancing Winds” (1987) by Vivian Fine (1913-2000), a piano prodigy who studied with Crawford and premiered works by the likes of Ives, Copland, Cowell, and many others before becoming noted particularly for her vocal and chamber works; she taught composition at Bennington College for nearly four decades beginning in 1964.
The only non-American on the program is Claude Arrieu (Marie-Louise Simon, 1903-1990), an extremely prolific French composer in all genres, including opera and film music, writing in a neo-classical style influenced by Ravel and Stravinsky; her five-movement Quintet in C (1953), bouncy and lyrical, is irrepressibly French.
The program is rounded out by an arrangement of the spiritual “Steal Away” by composer and flutist Valerie Coleman (b. 1970), a member of perhaps the most exciting woodwind quintet in America today: the Imani Winds, a group of African- and Latin-American musicians whose repertory ranges widely from works in the standard “Western” canon to new music, African, Latin, other world musics, and American jazz.
In addition to inspiring music, attendees will be treated to a buffet supper of hearty hors d'oeuvres and salads, a sampling of fine Vermont cheeses, and an array of delectable desserts by several of the area's professional chefs and bakers.
A silent auction table will present a few select items for bid and a wide array of two-for-one tickets to concerts in the tri-state region through the spring and summer seasons.
Arrivals are welcome between 5:30 and 6 p.m. for the buffet and silent auction. The 7 p.m. concert will be followed by the dessert course's many tempting offerings.