Community Conversation: Pioneering Women Composers – Dame Ethel Smyth, Women’s Suffrage, and Musical Identity

Musicologist and Ethel Smyth scholar Dr. Amy Zigler of Salem College will present an informal talk on pioneering women composers, with an emphasis on the life and music of the gender-bending composer Dame Ethel Smyth.

This presentation is part of the celebration of Women’s History Month in conjunction with the Western Piedmont Symphony’s upcoming March 7 Masterworks: Symphonie Fantastique concert, which features the regional premiere of Smyth’s Overture to The Wreckers (1906) and a performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 by acclaimed violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins. Berlioz’s magnificent Symphonie Fantastique closes the concert.