8 Summer Concerts by Female Composers
Get ready for some live music with these concert picks featuring music written by women. This guide covers gigs in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Gloucester and even includes a bicycle-powered world premiere! If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting us by buying us a cuppa on Ko-fi. Thank you 😘
Friday 9 July, 7.30pm, £20
Royal Festival Hall, London
A bicycle-powered (!) world premiere composed by Laura Bowler and performed by London Sinfonietta. Houses Slide describes one woman’s intimate psychological journey to figure out her response to the climate crisis, from an initial depressing realisation of the gravity of the issue, through to her refusal to be overwhelmed and decision to take positive action. The creative team is largely female, with conductor Sian Edwards, director Katie Mitchell OBE and text by Cordelia Lynn.
20-22 August, £29-£34
Edinburgh Academy Junior School (part of Edinburgh International Festival)
The story of Dido and Aeneas didn’t end with Dido’s death. Discover what happened next and how memories wield a power all of their own, as composer Errollyn Wallen CBE continues the tale, interweaving a full performance of Purcell’s great operatic tragedy within her own brilliant new opera that blends ancient and modern. Errollyn Wallen has written pop and jazz-influenced songs alongside contemporary classical music. Read more about her in our 10 contemporary black composers article.
Tuesday 20 July, 7.30pm, £25 (<35s £5)
Wigmore Hall, London
Contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment (harp, clarinet, voice and double bass) is directed by our co-founder Hanna Grzeskiewicz. Their programme at Wigmore Hall near Oxford Circus is jam-packed with music by women: Meredith Monk, Kerry Andrew, Josephine Stephenson, Lili Boulanger and Cécile Chaminade. If you’re under 35, grab those £5 tickets!
Friday 16 July, 7.30pm, £20 (£10 for lower-waged residents)
Central Hall, Manchester Central & online
Head to Manchester International Festival to hear a new work by British-Bulgarian composer Dobrina Tabakova at an intimate and immersive concert inspired by the healing potential and power of the natural world. This new concerto for violin, strings and percussion, performed by Hugo Ticciati and Manchester Camerata, sits alongside four other pieces, all by living composers: Julieta Szewach, Steve Reich and Paul Saggers.
Sunday 18 July, 1pm, £9.50
Kings Place, London
Guitarists Katalin Koltai and Hope Cramsie play music by women at this lunchtime recital in King’s Cross, including new commissions by Electra Perivolaris, Florence Anna Maunders and Louise Drewett. This performance is part of the IGF Guitar Summit: three packed days of concerts, workshops, panel discussion and masterclasses with some of the world’s greatest guitarists.
12-17 July, £0-£25
Royal Opera House, London & online
Engender is The Royal Opera’s initiative to change gender imbalance in opera and music theatre and drive towards gender equity in all areas of the opera field. This annual festival celebrates the work of women and gender minorities in opera through performances, workshops, networking and meet ups. Mami Wata (16-17 July) features new music by British composers Bushra El-Turk and Errollyn Wallen, alongside music by Nkeiru Okoye, Lettie Beckon Alston, Dorothy Rudd Moore and Nahla Mattar.
Read more about Nkeiru Okoye and Errollyn Wallen in our 10 contemporary black composers article.
Thursday 5 August, 7.30pm, £7.50-£42
Royal Albert Hall, London
Music composed and conducted by a woman . Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a BBC Prom, which opens with Symphony No. 2 in B major by Ruth Gipps MBE (1921-1999), a pupil of Vaughan Williams who started her career as an oboist with this very orchestra. Her symphony takes a wide-screen, cinematic view of the Second World War, embracing exhilaration, anxiety and, finally, ecstatic rejoicing. It’s followed by the London premiere of The Exterminating Angel Symphony by Thomas Adès CBE, inspired by Louis Buñuel’s Surrealist film.
Friday 9 July, £5-£30
Gloucester Cathedral
The closing concert of this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival provides an opportunity to hear the opening track of Caroline Shaw’s brilliant 2019 album Orange. In 2013, at the age of 30, Shaw became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Entr’acte is performed here by the 12 Ensemble, an un-conducted string ensemble with a revolutionary approach to music-making. The programme also includes an unusual piece from the 17th century, Battalia à 10 by Heinrich Biber, and Fratres, a 1970s piece by Arvo Pärt, the most performed living composer in the world for much of the last decade.
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur, developing new audiences for classical music. She has created and promoted numerous concerts outside of traditional spaces, including warehouses, pubs, clubs, museums, hospitals, prisons and even in Primark. Hannah also hosts monthly drinks for the classical music industry and runs a choir in Stoke Newington. Her alter ego is the Founder of London Flashmob, producing quirky events from wedding proposals to cultural pranks for up to 1,000 people.
Follow Hannah on Twitter @Hannah_Fiddy.