Alison Bauld was born in 1944 in Sydney. A piano student of Alexander Sverjensky at the Conservatorium of NSW, she later studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, subsequently touring in Shakespearian productions for a year before completing a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Sydney. She came to England on […]

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 […]

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944) Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was born in New Hampshire. Musically precocious, she sang improvised harmony parts at age two, composed at age four, and began piano studies with her mother, Clara Imogene Marcy Cheney, at age six, giving her first public recitals at seven. In 1875 the Cheney family moved […]

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 […]

Beth Anderson (M.F.A./M.A.) is a critically acclaimed composer of neo-romantic, avant-garde music, text-sound works, and musical theater. Born in Kentucky, she studied primarily in California with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley and Larry Austin at Mills College and U.C. Davis. She is a member of Broadcast Musicians Inc. (BMI), the American Composers' Forum, International […]

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 […]

Cecile Chaminade was a French composer and pianist. Born in Paris, she studied piano with her mother and was experimenting with composition from an early age. At the age of eight, she played some of her music to Bizet, who encouraged her and advised her parents to provide her with a musical education. At this […]

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 […]

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth(1858-1944)overcame the constraints of her middle-class English background by open rebellion. Taught piano and theory as ladylike accomplishments, she became so concentrated in her studies that her family deemed them unsuitably intense, and stopped her lessons. The teenaged Ethel went on a protracted and progressively more severe strike, finally confining herself to […]

February 23, 2000 marked the 100th birthday of one of America's outstanding classical composers, Elinor Remick Warren. In the early part of this century, Warren broke the gender barrier by becoming a celebrated composer of serious music at a time when males dominated the field. At the time of her death in 1991, Warren had […]

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 […]

Faye-Ellen Silverman began her music studies before the age of four at the Dalcroze School of Music. She first achieved national recognition by winning the Parents League Competition, judged by Leopold Stokowski, at the age of 13. She played her winning composition in Carnegie Hall (main hall) - her professional piano debut - and also […]

Francesca Caccini was the was an Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet, and music teacher of the early Baroque era. She was the daughter of Giulio Caccini, and was probably the most famous and influential female European composer, in any genre, between Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century and the 19th century. Her opera, La […]

Isabella Colbran was a Spanish dramatic coloratura soprano, who was known in her native country as Isabel Colbrandt. It was said she was truly a mezzo-soprano with a high extension, her range was a strong G below middle C to a very agile and ringing E above high C. In addition to singing, she also […]

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 […]

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 […]

Composer Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945) is internationally recognized for her distinctive style, characterized by its expressive strength and dynamism. Many of her 100 works are prize-winning compositions; these include three symphonies, chamber opera, oratorios and cantatas, music for wind ensemble, vocal-chamber pieces with varying accompanying ensembles, a wide variety of chamber works, and solo […]

Primarily known as an American art song composer, Juliana Hall (born 1958) has written over 35 song cycles and her commissions include two for song cycles for Metropolitan Opera singers Dawn Upshaw (soprano) and David Malis (baritone). Her music has been performed by more than 100 different performers in major concert halls in Argentina, Australia, […]

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 […]

Lili Boulanger was a French composer, the younger sister of the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. A child prodigy, Boulanger's talent was apparent even at the age of two, spotted by her parents, both of whom were musicians themselves and encouraged their daughter's musical education. (Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, was a Russian princess, […]

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 […]

Margaret Bonds was an American composer and pianist. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes. Bonds worked as an accompanist for dances and singers in various shows and supper clubs around Chicago; she also copied […]

The mezzo-soprano (although she commonly sang soprano parts) Maria Malibran was one of the most famous opera singers of the 19th century. Malibran was known for her stormy personality and dramatic intensity, becoming a legendary figure after her death at age 28. Contemporary accounts of her voice describe its range, power and flexibility as extraordinary.

Poet/composer/lyricist Mira J. Spektor has written chamber music, chamber operas & musicals, including The Housewives' Cantata (lyrics by June Siegel), Lady of the Castle (based on Lea Goldberg's Israeli play), The Passion of Lizzie Borden (poems by Ruth Whitman), Villa Diodati (about Mary Shelley, lyrics by Colette Inez) and Giovanni the Fearless (A Commedia del’Arte […]

Nadia Boulanger entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10 and by the time she was 16 she had won every applicable award there. Her sister Lili (1893-1918) followed in her footsteps, in fact studying with Nadia for a time, and became the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome for composition, […]

Pauline Garcia-Viardot, a nineteenth century French mezzo-soprano and composer, was born in Paris to a glamorous Spanish opera family, the great Garcias. As a young woman, she was overshadowed by her beautiful older sister, Maria Malibran, but her father, Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, made Pauline his favorite and trained her on the piano and […]

Rebecca Clarke was an English classical composer and violist best known for her chamber music featuring the viola. She is considered by one commentator to be one of the most important British composers in the interwar period between World War I and World War II; she has also been described as the most distinguished British […]

Stefania de Kenessey is a leading figure in contemporary classical music. Honored repeatedly with awards from ASCAP, her music is performed nationally at; venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, as well as throughout the world. Her output ranges from choral, vocal and operatic pieces to chamber and orchestral work, as well as scores […]

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 […]