International Alliance for Women in Music

Annual Concert 2021    

Recognizing the accomplishments of IAWM member composers and increasing the awareness of the musical contributions of women.

Where: Howard University, Washington D.C., USA.
When: November 16, 2021, 7:30 p.m. EST

 

The winners are:

Tatev Amiryan for her composition “Praise the LORD”

Ashi Day for her composition “For Whom the Dog Tolls”

Anne Hege for her composition “Vocal Fantasy”

Gyuli Kambarova for her composition “Sonata Concertante”

Bonnie McLarty for her composition “When the Rain Comes”

Catherine Reid for her composition “I’m Falling”

Hannah Selin for her composition “Alf’s Labyrinth”

Karen Walwyn for her composition “Mother Emanuel” from her “Charleston Suite”  

 

The winners’ biographies:

Dr. Tatev Amiryan is an award-winning composer and pianist, a native of Armenia. Her music has been performed in the US, Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, England, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan by such renowned ensembles and performers as the German Chamber Philharmonic of Bremen, CMEA Central Coast Honors Orchestra, Carpe Diem String Quartet, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Oktoplus, Metropolitan Choral of Kansas City, pianists Jeffrey Jacob, Hayk Melikyan, and thereminist Thorwald Jørgensen.  Amiryan has received the 1st Prize at the Armenian Allied Arts 71st Composition Competition, the UMKC Conservatory Chamber Music Composition Competition, Metropolitan Chorale of Kansas City’s Composition Contest, Abundant Silence Composition Competition, Crossing Borders Music, and Juventas New Music Ensemble Call for Scores, and the 2nd Prize at New Ariel Recordings Fifth Piano Composition Competition. She has been commissioned by such acclaimed organizations and performers as North German Radio, New Ariel Recordings, Abundant Silence Music Publisher, pianists Jeffrey Jacob, and Hayk Melikyan.

Visit https://www.tatevamiryan.com

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Ashi Day’s vocally-driven works explore unconventional intersections between music and theater and reimagining roles for women. In her 10-minute opera, For Whom the Dog Tolls, a soprano plays a deviously victorious hunting dog. Her mini-play for soprano and clarinet, The Green Child, casts both performers as characters in a mysterious legend. Ashi won calls for scores for Denison TUTTI, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Calliope’s Call, New Music DC, Music by Women, UNC’s ROCC, and the Women Composers Festival of Hartford. She co-created works for the NEO Voice Festival, DC’s Source Festival, and Capital Fringe, and placed in the 2020 FYFE Choral Composition Competition. Commissions and performances include Metropolitan Master Chorale of LA, Cantate Chamber Singers, PERI Trio, Cantilena, Whistling Hens, and more. Ashi also manages several education programs for the Kennedy Center and sings as a professional church musician and with DC’s composer/conductor collaborative, Artifice.  

Visit www.ashi-day.com

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Dr. Anne K. Hege creates musical worlds that invite an awareness of and attention to the body. Her works have been performed by So Percussion, Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Stanford Laptop Orchestra, Google Mobile Devices Ensemble, loadbang, Ensemble Klang, NOW Ensemble, Voce in Tempore, Newspeak, Piedmont East Bay Children’s Chorus, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Resound Ensemble, as well as others. From 2008-2015, Hege composed musical scores for Carrie Ahern Dance with over 40 performances of these works in locations including the vaults of a Wall Street Bank, a retired Lyceum, and Dickson’s Farmstand. Hege has received awards and grants, including a New Music USA Project Grant, Mark Nelson Fellowship (Princeton University), Composer in Residence (Resound Ensemble), Artist in Residence (CCRMA, Stanford University), Research Affiliate (Princeton University), among other awards. She is currently composing an opera for the Stanford Laptop Orchestra to premiere in 2021.

Visit https://www.annehege.com/

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Gyuli Kambarova is a classically trained pianist and composer who graduated from the prestigious Rostov State Rachmaninov Conservatory, where she received a double Masters of Music, with honors, in Piano Performance and Music Composition. Her career began in Southern Russia, where she composed, performed, and taught. In 2010, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Her work in the United States includes performances at the University of Louisville School of Music, Youth Performing Arts School, Louisville Academy of Music, and other venues in Kentuckiana as a pianist and composer in collaboration with many of the gifted musicians and dancers of the area. She has released three CDs: “Dreams” (2014), “My Way” (2016), and “Memories” (2018). These recordings include several different styles such as classical, romantic, jazz, contemporary, and cinematic. Gyuli’s work has been internationally recognized by several elite organizations. She was a finalist at the prestigious International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition (Prague). Recent awards include “Fifteen-Minutes-Of-Fame: Re-Imagining Shubert” (New York), and Commissioned Composer 2019 by the Kentucky Music Teachers Association. Mrs. Kambarova lives in Louisville and works at the University of Louisville School of Music, the Louisville Academy of Music, and Youth Performing Arts School, and gives private piano and composition lessons at her own studio.

Visit https://www.gyulikambarova.com/

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Bonnie McLarty’s music has been described as “beautifully written, singable, and rewarding.” Her pieces have won several awards, including the 2019 Cincinnati Camerata Composition Award and the 2017 Robert E. Foster Wind Ensemble Prize. Much of her recent work has focused on collaborating with women poets and local artists, particularly her art song folio Weather-telling and her dramatic song cycle Snow Angel, which was premiered by the Lawrence Opera Theatre in August 2019. Bonnie is particularly interested creating community through music. Her works often feature musical dialog between performers, extra-musical elements, and significant influences from American vernacular and popular genres. Bonnie earned her D.M.A. in composition from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Wyoming. She is currently based in the Kansas City area, where she is an assistant adjunct professor of music theory at UMKC. 

Visit www.bonniemclarty.com

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Catherine Reid’s compositions include The Broken Jug, an opera commissioned by the Indianapolis Opera Company (librettist David Ives), music for The Bark and the Tree (playwright Vivian Nesbitt), performed at the United solo Festival, and The Colossus of Rhodes (playwright Carey Purloff) that was performed at ACT and the Eugene O’Neill Theater. Her opera The Yellow Wallpaper (librettist Judith Lane) received a full production at Peabody Conservatory.  Her musical Cemetery: The Musical and her collaborative oratorio The Last Call (poet Paul Pines) were each performed at the Charles Wood Theater. Catherine was also commissioned to compose several works in collaboration with the Hyde Collection including A Collection in ConcertandDegas: His Love, His Women, His Art. The piece in this concert, I’m Falling, is fromher show Andrew Wyeth in Music, Dance, Imagery, and Poetry and is from the inside of Andrew Wyeth’s mind as he is painting.

Visit https://reidc1.wixsite.com/website

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Composer, violist and vocalist Hannah Selin juxtaposes acoustic instruments and voices with electronics and field recordings to create striking and vibrant sound-spaces. Rooted in the sentience of sounds, her music is characterized by shimmering sound-masses that merge and separate in unexpectedly moving ways. She is a founding member of the band GADADU (www.gadadu.com), and violist in Xanthoria Quartet (www.xanthoriaquartet.com). Hannah has received commissions and awards from Brooklyn Metro Chamber Orchestra, ASCAP, the International Alliance for Women in Music, One Quiet Plunge, Collide-O-Scope Music, inEnsemble, percussionist Lucas Conant, and violists Karen Ritscher and Kallie Ciechomski. She was selected as a 2018 resident at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and her score for short film 222, directed by Delfine Paolini, was nominated for the 2018 Peer Raben Music Award at the Soundtrack Cologne Festival. Hannah is currently pursuing her PhD in composition as a University Fellow at Temple University.

Visit hannahselin.net

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Steinway Artist Karen Walwyn, Concert Pianist, Composer and an Albany Recording Artist, is the first female African American pianist/composer to receive the Steinway Artist Award. A native of New York, Ms. Walwyn made her New York solo piano debut at Merkin Hall as a follow-up to her 2-CD series for Albany Records entitled Dark Fires, offering premiere recordings of works by African American composers. The American Record Guide said “Walwyn’s pianism is superb”, and Fanfare Magazine said “Walwyn gets through this technically demanding program with aplomb.” Premiering the Florence Price Piano Concerto in One Movement with the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble, Bob McQuiston wrote: “Walwyn provides a magnificent account of the concerto displaying her considerable technical skills.”As a composer, she received the Global Award: “Gold Medal – Award of Excellence” for her composition entitled Reflections on 9/11. Fanfare Magazine wrote: “Imaginatively conceived and executed, it both disturbingly transposes the catastrophe into appropriately cataclysmic sound and artistically suggests the aftermath’s lingering sense of numbing devastation.” Walwyn is in constant demand nationally and internationally for both concert performances of repertoire from Frédéric Chopin to Florence Price, as well as commissions for works from solo instrumental works to orchestral works.