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France

Mel Bonis

Mélanie Bonis’s life story is one of perseverance and talent overcoming all manner of obstacles. She grew up in a middle-class home with parents who

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Spain

Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo was one of the most significant figures in 20th-century Spanish music. A gifted composer, pianist, academic, and music critic, he cultivated a neoclassical

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United States

Irene Britton Smith

Irene Britton Smith was a Black American composer (also of Crow and Cherokee descent) who wrote only thirty-six compositions, including nineteen pieces of vocal music.

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Margaret Bonds
United States

Margaret Bonds

Composer and pianist Margaret Bonds grew up in a musically rich environment in Chicago—her mother was a gifted organist, and in high school Bonds studied

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United States

H. Leslie Adams

The composer and pianist H. Leslie Adams has had a long and illustrious career. Now in his nineties, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in

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Germany

Marie Vespermann

Marie Vespermann was a quintuple threat: a pianist, singer, composer, poet, and dramatist, who showed prodigious musical gifts as a child. Born into an artistic

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England

Rebecca Clarke

Rebecca Clarke was one of most distinguished and gifted British composers in the first half of the 20th century. Born to an American father and

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Mexico

Rodrigo Ruiz

Rodrigo Ruiz is a Mexican-American composer who writes vocal, chamber, and orchestral music that has been described as “unabashedly tonal.” His music sounds by turns

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Ireland

Ina Boyle

Until recently, the name Ina Boyle was something of an enigma. Although she was one of the most prolific composers in Ireland during the first

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Germany

Marie von Kehler

Precious little is known about the German composer Marie von Kehler. We have more music by her than documentary information about her. She was born

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United States

Connie Converse

Connie Converse was one of the first singer-songwriters, but she toiled in obscurity, and her music didn’t become widely known until the first decade of

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Mary Wurm
England

Mary Wurm

Mary Wurm was a pianist and composer, born in England to German parents. She grew up in a musical family: her father was a music

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Did you know?

A portfolio of Clara Faisst’s autograph manuscripts (as well as photographs and programs) was discovered at a garbage site in Karlsruhe, Germany; the manuscripts would have been lost forever were it not for an eagle-eyed passerby.

Did you know?

Fanny Hensel’s op. 1 (a collection of six songs) was published in the summer of 1846, less than a year before she died of a stroke at the age of 41.