Camarada

Music She Wrote showcases music by, for, and about women. Fanmi Imèn by Valerie Coleman was written in 2018 and the name is Haitian Creole for Maya Angelou's famous song "Human Family." Camarada will also present works by Libby Larsen, George Gershwin, Carlisle Floyd, Amy Beach and Gabriela Lena Frank.

Valerie Coleman's Fanmi Imèn draws inspiration from French flute music blending with an underlying pentatonicism found in Asian traditions, a caravan through Middle Eastern parts of the world merging with Flamenco, and an upbeat journey southward into Africa with the sounds of Kalimba (thumb piano).

The capricious movement P’asña Marcha for viola and piano is from a suite by Gabriela Lena Frank based on pictures by Martin Chambi—the first Amerindian photographer to gain international acclaim. This movement evokes the sound of charangos and guitars based on dances Peruvian women danced for each other as they balanced large poles in their heads.

Also featured in this program are the Three Browning Songs by Amy Beach, the first American woman composer to achieved widespread success. Her restless and passionate harmony and lyricism are evident in her realization of Robert Browning’s voluptuous poetry.

Quartet: She Wrote by Libby Larsen is inspired by a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Solitary Hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary paper she writes.”

The four sections of this quartet correspond with Joyce’s narrative by imagining music for what occurs between the final five sentences of the passage: “She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out.” Larsen responded musically, imagining not what “she” wrote but instead imagining her creative energy.

Soprano Tasha Koontz will perform "The Trees On The Mountains" from Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah. This aria depicts the plight of a young woman begging to be free from the world she lives in.