Listen Locally – DeVOTED

Listen Locally –  DeVOTED
A Multi-Media Musical Tribute to the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage

Friday, May 1, 2020
7:30pm

TICKETS

On August 18, 1920 the United States Congress ratified the 19th Amendment, giving women in this country the right to vote. Our country became a better place….
The Library & Music Hall proudly celebrates this pivotal centennial with Bell’Art Ensemble’s DeVOTED.

A musical and visual commentary on women’s suffrage in the early 20th century, DeVOTED pays homage to the devotion of legions of women, named and unnamed, who pursued equality in the form of voting rights. It conveys a multi-generational view of this tumultuous time in American history.

DeVOTED will be performed by Bell’Art (Ashley Freeburn, violin; Jack Kurutz, piano; Billie Jo Miller, piano; Lenny Young, oboe, as well as mezzo Raquel Winnica Young) in collaboration with soprano Laura Knoop Very and video artist David Bernabo and feature music selected across the arc of the 20th century.

Doors open at 6:30 pm || Concert begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20 in advance / $25 at the door / $15 students

Get your tickets in advance here.

More about the program…

DeVOTED will run approximately 75 minutes, divided into four sections: Ties; Battle; Hope; and Victory. Each section focuses on a different aspect of the struggle for suffrage.

DeVOTED features an impressive roster of women composers and their even more impressive music:

• French composer Cecile Chaminade (1847-1944), described as “not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman;”
• Dame Ethel Smyth (1855-1944), English composer, and active member of the suffrage movement in her country;
• Amy Beach (1867-1944), the first successful American composer of large classical works;
• Alma Mahler, (1879- 1964), composer of songs for voice and piano. Was married to composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius and novelist Franz Werfel;
• Marion Bauer (1882-1955), influencer of American musical identity in the first half of the 20th century;
• Florence Price (1887-1953), the first African American woman to be noted as a symphonic composer;
• Johanna Beyer (1888-1944), a German American composer and “ultra-modernist” in the 1930s, who composed a repertoire for percussion ensemble;
• Lili Boulanger (1893-1984), the first woman awarded the Prix de Rome composition prize;
• Katherine K. Davis (1892-1980), composer of more than 600 works, mostly choral works, including the beloved carol “The Little Drummer Boy”;
• Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901- 1953), a modernist American composer and folk music specialist.

The ACFL&MH is thrilled that DeVOTED includes a contemporary composer. Nancy Galbraith is Chair of Composition at Carnegie Mellon University. This prolific, “post-modernist/post-minimalist” composer’s works have enjoyed Pittsburgh Symphony premieres under the batons of Mariss Jansons and Gennady Rozhdetsvensky.