6 LGBTQI+ Composers you should listen TODAY

Equality should be celebrated every day and Donne's main goal is to AMPLIFY all the voices.

We would like to invite you to listen to these amazing LGTBQI+ composers during June, the PRIDE MONTH! And don't forget to share.

Do you have any other names to suggest? We would love to make a part two of this list! Let us know!

And happy listening!

ETHEL SMYTH - USA

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944) was a queer English composer, writer and a member of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Her works consists in Operas, Piano Solos, Orchestras, Vocals, Chamber Musics and Organ Solos.

Listen to her here:

PAULINE OLIVEROS - USA

Pauline Oliveros was an American composer and accordionist. She had an important role in the development of electronic art music. 

Listen to her here:

 

WENDY CARLOS - USA

Wendy Carlos is a transsexual american musician and composer known for her electronic music and film soundtracks. She made musics for A Clockwork Orange, The Shinning, Tron and others. She also made an album with the music from Bach synthesized and won three Grammy Awards! 

Listen to her here:

JENNIFER HIGDON - USA

Jennifer Higdon is an American Composer of Classical Music and a teacher. She won several prizes including a Pulitzer Prize for Music and two Grammy Awards! She met her wife in high school and they live today in Philadelphia. 

Listen to her here:

 

KRISTIN NORDERVAL - USA

Kristin Norderval is a LGBTQI+ composer and performer. She is a master in the art of improvisations - from classical music to jazz. As a composer, she tries to explore the nuances of the human voice. 

Listen to her here:

DEBORAH CHEETHAM - AUSTRALIA

Deborah Cheetam is a world-renowned Indigenous opera singer, composer, playwright and creator of Australia’s first Indigenous opera @shortblackopera, with a passion and strong commitment to improving access to careers in the arts for young Indigenous Australians.⁠

Listen do her here:

JUNE 18

SHIRLEY MIER - USA

Born 18 June

More about her here

Find scores by Shirley Mier:

RENE ORTH - USA
Born 18 June

More about her here

Find scores by Rene Orth:

 Check here last year's composers of the day

18 JUNE 2019

JOAN TRIMBLE - UK 
BORN 18 JUNE

Joan  Trimble was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland. She studied piano with Annie Lord at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, and music at Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1936, BMus 1937) and continued her studies at the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, until 1940 (piano with Arthur Benjamin and composition with Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams).

She first gained notice as part of a piano duo with her sister Valerie (1917–1980), earning a first prize at a Belfast music competition as early as 1925. Joan also composed a number of works for two pianos which the duo performed. A 1938 recital at the RCM, at which they performed three of them, was their breakthrough. Other composers wrote works for them, too, including Jamaican Rumba by Arthur Benjamin, which became a signature tune for the duo. Trimble's Phantasy Trio (1940) won the Cobbett Prize for chamber music. The sisters also performed modern music, including works by Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, Arthur Bliss and Lennox Berkeley and continued to perform in public until 1970. Trimble married in 1942 and had children, which restricted her compositional output. In 1957 her opera Blind Raftery was the third opera commissioned by the BBC for television, and the first television opera written by a female composer. Between 1959 and 1977 she taught piano at the RCM, with the years since 1967 travelling from Northern Ireland.

Joan Trimble's music is conservative for her time. She combined the impressionist harmonic language she had learned since her studies with Annie Lord with melodic and rhythmic inflections derived from Irish traditional music. Her arrangements of Irish airs for two pianos do not differ stylistically from her original compositions. Her most advanced music will be found in the Sonatina for two pianos (1940) and the impressive song cycle The County Mayo (1949). Trimble's music is always melodic, tastefully written, and rewarding for performers.

After her father's death in 1967 she went to work on his newspaper, The Impartial Reporter in Enniskillen, and cared for her husband who was severely ill for decades. She regained some attention in the 1990s when she was commissioned for a new composition  and the first recordings of her music appeared. 

♫ LISTEN

Phantasy Trio by Joan Trimble by Galina  Ustvoskaja

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LINA PIRES DE CAMPOS - BRAZIL  

BORN 18 JUNE

Lina Pires de Campos was born in São Paulo, Brazil, the daughter of Italian luthier Angelo Del Vecchio. She studied piano with Ema Lubrano Franco and Léo Peracchi and music theory and composition with Furio Franceschini, Caldeira Filho and Osvaldo Lacerda. Later she studied composition with Camargo Guarnieri.

Pires de Campos worked as assistant to Magda Tagliaferro and in 1964 founded her own piano school. She won awards as a composer including in 1961 the Roquete Pinto medal and the second place composition prize from Radio Mec. Her works have been performed internationally.

♫ LISTEN

Ponteio e Toccatina by Lina Pires de Campos

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