The public filled the Live Room to live with great emotion a very special experience in which students and alumni claimed the music made by women in the best possible way: presenting it with a great quality of arrangements and interpretation and with a great spirit of collaboration and communication.
On March 7, as part of the celebrations of International Women’s Day, the Conservatori Liceu Foundation, as usual on these dates, held two events with the aim of contributing more than ever to make visible the Music created by Women in all areas, and to emphasize the need to break the conventions that still exist and that make it difficult to see Women in certain musical roles in which they can make an artistic contribution of utmost importance.
The Conservatori Liceu’s events on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2024 began at 13:30h in the Live Room Conservatori Liceu, with a concert focusing on classical and contemporary works by top female composers, some of them not sufficiently known to the music-loving public. Works by Cécile Chaminade, Germaine Tailleferre, Amy Beach, Marina Dranishnikova and Carme Karr were performed in a very rich and attractive concert, which also included a work by the center’s student Maria Mancera. The repertoire provided a very eloquent display of female musical creativity to the audience that filled the Live Room and followed the concert with enthusiasm. The various pieces were performed by Bachelor and Master students from the Departments of Singing, Piano and Orchestral Instruments: Carla Alonso (flute), Jana Ginesta (oboe), Lídia Soldevila, Maria Roig, Núria Sans, Maria Solé and Alba Linares (piano), and Maria Mancera, Estela Ángel, Chiara Guttieri, Laura Fernández and Noèlia Rivera (singing). Professors Maria Alonso and Maria Mauri contributed by accompanying some of the works on the piano.
The event began with the words of Maria Serrat, General Director of the Conservatori Liceu Foundation, who thanked the collaboration of the students of the Center, stressing the importance of the presence of female creation not only on a special day, but that it should be visible every day. The Academic Director of the Centro Superior, Víctor Estapé, emphasized the great richness of the musical repertoire created by women, stressing that it is not enough to remain in the claim, but it is necessary to work and get actively involved to discover, learn, interpret and disseminate the works of the great female composers of the past and present.
The concert ended with a moving performance by all the singers of The March of Women, by the great English composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth.
At 20:00h took place, also in the magnificent space of the Live Room Conservatori Liceu, a Concert-Jam session, in which female students and graduates of the Conservatori, mainly from the Department of Jazz and Modern Music, performed compositions by women compiled by the acclaimed American drummer Terry Lyne Carrington, who has combined her musical career with a very important political activity in favor of feminism and the LGTBIQ+ collective. Carrington released in 2022 the album New Standards Vol. 1, with which she vindicates the figure of women in the world of jazz and composition.
The General Director Maria Serrat opened the evening’s event together with the Head of the Department of Jazz and Modern Music, Gonzalo del Val, who highlighted the great work done by the students of his Department in preparing the repertoire for the evening. In this Concert-Jam session, the students of the Center performed their own arrangements of music by composers such as Mary Lou Williams, Alice Coltrane, Esperanza Spalding, Geri Allen, Maria Schneider, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Dorothy Ashby, Nubya Garcia or Nicole Mitchell, before a large audience that filled the Live Room to overflowing, formed by students from all Departments, teachers and professors, alumni and friends of the Center.
The interpreters were the singers Aina Tramulla, Blanca Funes, Frederica Esaguy, Nàdia Orta, Joana Craven-Bartle, Irene Poncela, Elena Grueso, Natalia Delgado, Garazi Baró, Júlia Pascual, Clàudia Castellsegué, Alicia Yáñez, Leyre Estruch i Andrea Quincoces, the pianists Amanda Traveria Carnicero, Àngela Hereu, Andrea De Blas i Jana Gallifa, the drummer Mónica Vicente, bassists Ana Cruz and Cala Quintero, guitarist Emma Feldhandler-Mugnaini, cellists Andrea López Conde and Elvira Barnadas, violinist Shanti Haydee Valdés, violist Clementina Boeykens, flautists Ana Ayala and Mar Gironell, saxophonists Itziar Mendivil, Marisol Martínez Sosa and Amaia Hermoso, trumpeter Elsa Armengou, and oboist Júlia López Ariño. Their performances received the fervent applause of the audience, who lived with great emotion a very special experience in which music made by women was vindicated in the best possible way: presenting it with a great quality of arrangements and interpretation, and with a great spirit of collaboration and communication, which had in the Live Room of the Conservatori Liceu the ideal environment.
Afterwards, a jam session led by Professor Diana Palau was opened, in which the musicians present participated playing compositions from the New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets By Women Composers, this great collection created by Terry Lyne Carrington.
With these activities, the Conservatori Liceu has wanted to join once again the events celebrated around the world on this special day, filling a positive and encouraging look at the enormous wealth of music written by women. Female musical creation has often been neglected due to unfair circumstances and attitudes, and it is necessary to actively vindicate it, studying it and playing it in order to know it better, and to know how to give it the place it deserves in the concert repertoire of all styles and also in the study programs and in musical research.