A Celebration of Women’s Achievements in Music / LONTANO

In the context of International Women’s Day, the Music Department at KCL features women’s contributions to contemporary ‘art’ music with a concert featuring works by the established and emerging composers Silvina Milstein and her student Effy Efthymiou. As a showcase for contemporary female achievement in ‘Western art music’ – formerly a forbidding domain for women composers – the concert is unapologetically celebratory. However, a post-concert discussion with the composers, chaired by musicologist Matthew Head, adds complexity by exploring what the category of ‘woman composer’ means to themThe programme includes Effy Efthymiou’s ‘Where they flocked’ for mixed quintet and percussion and ‘Even it is only a whisper’ for violin duo. Two septets with harp (‘ochre, umber and burnt sienna’ (inspired by Vermeer’s painting of women pondering in their private spaces) and ‘cristales y susurros’ by Silvina Milstein follow her ‘and told her in words that had no sound’ for solo violin and a string quartet movement inspired by Poe’s ‘the pit and the pendulum’.