Time to face the female music for Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

Women composers will make their musical mark in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s 2021 season.

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra musicians Emma Perkins (violin), Lisa Gill (flute) and Belinda Kendall-Smith (double bass) on the Pioneer Women’s Trail in Beaumont. Hair and make-up by M&CO Style Bar, dressed by Gretakate. Picture: Matt Turner.

Sisters are doing it for themselves in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s 2021 season, which will feature music by female composers in every one of its new Symphony Series concerts.

A special event called She Speaks will also explore the diversity of women’s compositional styles from Australia and abroad.

ASO flautist Lisa Gill said she was proud to play a part in its commitment to celebrate female composers.

“As we are continually striving towards inclusivity, I think it’s important to highlight music written by women – whether it be in the past, present or by supporting female composers of the future through commissioning new works,” Gill said.

“I’m especially looking forward to performing Elena Kats-Chernin’s Big Rhap … when I’ve played other pieces of hers I’ve really enjoyed the rhythmic complexity and vitality of her writing.”

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra musicians Lisa Gill (flute), Emma Perkins (violin) and Belinda Kendall-Smith (double bass) on the Pioneer Women’s Trail in Beaumont. Hair and make-up by M&CO Style Bar, dressed by Gretakate. Picture: Matt Turner.

Violinist Emma Perkins said there were many wonderful female composers whose work had been largely overlooked.

“This season the ASO will have the chance to bring some of their music to life for Adelaide audiences,” Perkins said.

Double bass player Belinda Kendall-Smith was eager to perform a work by French composer Lili Boulanger, the first woman to win the Prix de Rome music award in 1913.

“In our current world, many forms of atonement are both timely and necessary,” Kendall-Smith said.

“We celebrate Australian women composers of our time and also, more broadly, those worldwide women composers, who were not as widely played or recognised, simply because of the time into which they were born.”

The program for the first half of 2021 will be released on Monday, December 7, at aso.com.au