The Oregon Bach Festival is pleased to announce the lineup of lecture-recitals, academic panels, and presentations for the 2024 Musicking Conference, which runs April 9 through April 12.
The Conference – themed “Resurgent Voices” – is dedicated to highlighting previously lost, discarded, or suppressed “voices,” music, and performance practices.
“I guarantee that attendees will encounter music and composers they have never heard before, including some pieces that have never been published in modern times!” Oregon Bach Festival Associate Director of Performance Practice and Instrumental Programs, Dr. Holly Roberts, said.
The conference, which is free to attendees, opens April 9. Its first lecture-recital, “Gender Bending in Opera: A Voice Science Approach to Understanding the Impact of Behavioral and Physiological Changes on Gender Expression,” will explore both physiological and behavioral factors that influence gender expression through a voice-science lens. Performer Grace Vangel will bring their personal experience as a non-binary soprano to the conversation.
Lecture-Recital: Gender Bending in Opera: A Voice Science Approach to Understanding the Impact of Behavioral and Physiological Changes on Gender Expression” (Grace Vangel, Eugene, OR)
In the afternoon, Beverly Taflinger and Gustavo Castro-Ramirez will shine a spotlight on underrepresented female composer, Clara Schumann, with an illuminating lecture-recital. The conference continues April 10 with University of Oregon School of Music and Dance (SOMD) musicologist and organist Lindsey Rodgers, who brings to life the creative sounds of silenced 18th-century female organists and composers in a space that would have been forbidden for them as female musicians during their lifetime – the church.
Concert and Post-Concert Discussion: “Sounding Bodies in the Most Holy Spaces: Bringing Eighteenth-Century Women’s Keyboard Music to the Organ” (Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers, University of Oregon)
Our 2024 Distinguished Speaker, Ayana O. Smith will examine the role of history, images, and music in cementing our beliefs about identity, and question how the power of community-based listening can inform performance in her April 11 keynote address.
Ayana O. Smith, Associate Professor in Musicology, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
Hailing from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Smith will emphasize music examples from George Frideric Handel’s Guilio Cesare (1724) and Duke Ellington’s Harlem Speaks (1935) to engage notions of culturally relevant performance.
On April 12th, new SOMD faculty member, Assistant Professor of Historical Keyboards Dr. Joyce Chen, will introduce keyboard music written by female composers from the eighteenth century. The lecture-recital will conclude with a twenty-minute performance comprising works from Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre to contemporary female composers of the twenty-first century.
Lecture-Recital: “Cherchez la femme: Keyboard Music by Baroque Women Composers” (Joyce Chen, University of Oregon)
The University of Oregon Musicking Ensemble will conclude the conference, performing Il Trionfo per l’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine, by Nicola Ceva, an eighteenth-century Neapolitan composer unknown to most audiences.
Concert: Il Trionfo per l’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine, Nicola Ceva (Naples, 1705), featuring the University of Oregon Musicking Ensemble
All events are free and open to the public. No tickets or registration is required.