Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 17 pieces of popular sheet music from the 1890s through the early 1940s. She is perhaps best remembered for writing the parlor song 'I Love You Truly', becoming the first woman to sell one million copies of a song. An enduring favorite […]

Josephine Lang was a German composer. Fortunate enough to be born into a family rich with musical talent, Josephine Lang was the daughter of Theodor Lang, a violinist, and Regina Hitzelberger, opera singer. Her mother taught young Josephine how to play piano, and from age five it became apparent that Josephine possessed great potential as […]

LORI LAITMAN is one of America’s most prolific and widely performed composers of vocal music. She has composed three operas, an oratorio, choral works and over 250 songs, setting the words of classical and contemporary poets, among them the lost voices of poets who perished in the Holocaust. The Journal of Singing has written: “It […]

Libby Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America’s most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 500 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and over twelve operas. Grammy Award winning and widely recorded, including over fifty CDs of her […]

Alma Mahler (then Schindler) played piano from childhood and in her memoirs reports that she first attempted composing at age 9. She studied composition with Josef Labor beginning in 1895. She met Alexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement to Gustav […]

Johanna Kinkel, composer, poet and revolutionist, was born in Bonn on July 8, 1810. She was highly esteemed because of her intelligence and extensive education, her exceptional musical talent and her humor. By others she was considered overeducated and, thus, looked down upon as an unfeminine and emancipated woman. She freed herself from the tyranny […]

Fanny Mendelssohn, later Fanny Hensel, was a German pianist and composer, and was the sister of Felix Mendelssohn. Fanny benefited from the same musical education and upbringing as her brother Felix, sharing a number of his music tutors. Like Felix, who was born in 1809, Fanny showed prodigious musical ability as a child and began […]

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 27 May 1928, Thea Musgrave studied first at the University of Edinburgh and later at the Conservatoire in Paris, where she spent four years as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, before establishing herself back in London as a prominent member of British musical life with her orchestral, choral, operatic, and […]

Clara Schumann was born into a musical family to Friedrich Wieck, a music teacher, and Marianne Tromlitz Wieck, a soprano and student of Wieck. Clara's father had resolved before her birth that she would be a great musician and child prodigy. Her first public appearance was in 1828 (age 9) and her first complete piano […]

Born in Venice, Barbara was adopted and baptized into the Strozzi family. She was most likely illegitimate, daughter of Giulio Strozzi and Isabella Garzon, his long-time servant and heir. Giulio encouraged his daughter's talent, even creating an academy in which Barbara's performances could be validated and displayed publicly. He seemed to be interested in exhibiting […]