Music, Gender and Justice Symposium offers public concerts, events that spotlight music of women composers

Music, Gender and Justice Symposium offers public concerts, events that spotlight music of women composersSeptember 10, 2007Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

The intertwining of music, justice and the works of women composers are the common themes running through the public events of the Music, Gender and Justice Symposium at Syracuse University, presented Sept. 14-15 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the 2007 Syracuse Symposium (presented by SU’s College of Arts and Sciences) and Pulse.

The Music, Justice and Gender Symposium is a three-day international conference that will bring together scholars, performers and activists from the world of performance, composition, historical musicology, ethnomusicology and women’s studies for cross-disciplinary, inter-institutional exchange. Faculty members and students from the three member institutions in the Central New York Humanities corridor — SU, the University of Rochester (including the Eastman School of Music) and Cornell University — will be among the participants.

The symposium’s public events include:

• Friday, Sept. 14 — The Harlem Quartet will perform in concert at 8 p.m. in the Rose and Jules R. Setnor Auditorium in Crouse College. The Harlem Quartet aims to advance diversity in classical music while engaging young and new audiences through the discovery and presentation of varied repertoire, highlighting works by minority composers. The all black and Latino string quartet serves as principal faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy at Walnut Hill School in Massachusetts, one of the premier preparatory schools in the world, and as visiting faculty at the Sphinx Preparatory Music Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit. The quartet made its Carnegie Hall debut in fall 2006 and returned in January 2007 as participants in Arts Presenters’ prestigious and highly competitive Young Performers Career Advancement (YPCA) program. In addition to being avid chamber musicians, each member of the quartet is a seasoned solo artist, having appeared with the New York Philharmonic; the Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Sinaloa de las Artes (Mexico) and Baltimore symphonies and the Boston Pops, among others. As a quartet they have performed in many communities across the country.

• Saturday, Sept. 15 — A Mellon Humanities Corridor Student Concert will be held at 1:30 p.m. in Setnor Auditorium. The concert will feature works by women composers — Libby Larsen, Amy Beach, Evelyn Glennie, Pamela Decker, Clara Schumann and Judith Lang Zaimont.

• Saturday, Sept. 15 — A symposium keynote address on “Music and Torture” will be given by Suzanne Cusick at 2:45 p.m. in Room 107 of the Hall of Languages. Parking is available in the Booth Garage for $7 (there is a football game at noon). Cusick teaches musicology in New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences. She has published widely on the issues of gender, sexuality and embodiment in relationship to the music of early modern Italy and contemporary North America. Her monograph “Francesca Caccini, Musica (1587-c. 1646)” will be published in 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. Cusick’s current research focuses on the use of music in torture in detention camps operated by the American government.

• Saturday, Sept. 15 — A Mellon Humanities Corridor Faculty and Commissioned Composer Concert featuring The Harlem Quartet and faculty from all three Humanities Corridor institutions will be presented. The concert will be performed at 8 p.m. in Setnor Auditorium. Free parking is available in the Irving Garage. The concert will feature the music of women composers, including a world premiere by Judith Lang Zaimont that was specially commissioned by the Mellon Foundation. Zaimont’s music is internationally acclaimed for its expressive strength and dynamism. Many of her 100 works are prize-winning compositions, including three symphonies; several chamber opera pieces; music for wind ensemble, oratorios and cantatas; and other works for chorus, compositions for voice, solo instruments and a wide variety of chamber music. Her composition awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, commission grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and American Composers Forum, a 2003 Aaron Copland Award and a 2005 Bush Foundation Fellowship.

Additional performances, funded by the Mellon Foundation, will be repeated throughout the Central New York Humanities Corridor at the Eastman School of Music on Sept. 16 and Cornell University on Sept. 17.

Created in 2006, the Humanities Corridor is supported by a three-year, $1 million grant awarded to SU to collaborate with Cornell and the University of Rochester, including the Eastman School of Music, for the creation of a large-scale initiative to connect teaching and research in the humanities among these three leading institutions. Inspired in part by the mission of the science/technology Research Triangle in North Carolina, the Humanities Corridor works to enhance the profile and connectivity of the humanities in Central New York by drawing on the strengths of three Association of American Universities (AAU) member institutions. For more information on the Humanities Corridor, visit http://www-hl.syr.edu/cas-pages/Humanities_Mellon2006.htm.

The Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival, hosted by SU’s College of Arts and Sciences, that celebrates interdisciplinary thinking, imagination and creation. The theme for the 2007 series is “Justice.”

Pulse provides SU students and the local community opportunities to attend and participate in programs, performances, exhibitions and events in the visual and performing arts. It is a collaborative project of SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) and Division of Student Affairs. For more information, visit http://students.syr.edu/pulse.