Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance has today launched the ‘Venus Blazing’ project, which will ensure that female composers make up more than half its concert programmes in the 2018/19 academic year. Chair of Trinity Laban, Harriet Harman MP, launched the project at a lunchtime concert today in celebration of both International Women’s Day and the 90th birthday of British composer Thea Musgrave.
Harman commented on the power of the project, saying, ‘It will encourage and inspire its students – many of whom will go on to shape the future of the performing arts – to engage with the historic issue of gender imbalance in music by women, and ensure that it does not continue into the next generation.’
Trinity Laban holds more than 60 concerts and opera performances each year across London. The new project will place a key focus on 20th and 21st-century British composers, including composers from within the faculty itself.
Highlights for the coming season include symphonies by Louise Farrenc and Grace Williams performed by the Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra, as well as Deidre Gribbin’s Violin Concerto ‘Venus Blazing’, the name now given to the project.
Trinity Laban are also creating an online database of female composers to coincide with this project, expanding its library to allow students access to scores, books and recordings by women composers.
