When Julia Mortyakova started working as chair of the music department at Mississippi University for Women, she was thinking of ways to raise awareness of the contributions women have made to the classical music canon.
At the time, she was performing pieces composed by women who had been forgotten over time, specifically the work of Cécile Chaminade — an internationally renowned French composer and pianist who published more than 400 pieces before she died in 1944. Yet she is nowhere to be found in modern musical history books, Mortyakova said.
Mortyakova knew if she could create a space for more people to highlight female composers, it would make a difference in how the world remembers women in the industry. And with The W’s historic legacy of championing women in mind, she found the perfect place to do it.
She organized the first Music by Women Festival in 2017, bringing in more than 100 artists to perform pieces composed entirely by women.
“Our whole goal is to highlight the hidden figures in classical music, the women,” Mortyakova said. “The reason we’re doing that is because a lot of composers were very successful in their lifetime and achieved equal notoriety as their male counterparts, but somehow history erased them.”
Now in its eighth year, the festival features 250 musicians from around the world performing in five concerts each day from Thursday to Saturday. Experts in the industry give academic presentations in between concerts that focus on different topics concerning women in music ranging from specific composers to intersections with social justice.
“We’re doing our part to kind of rectify this historical injustice, to put them back onto the concert stage, and to just share this beautiful music with the world,” Mortyakova said.
Another aspect of the festival revolves around creating a space for up-and-coming contemporary women composers to showcase their work. It gives young women in the classical music space somewhere to feel represented, Mortyakova said.
“A lot of us are college faculty, so one thing we are concerned with is providing role models for our young women students, so that they know there are many, many women historically before them being recognized,” she said.
Since the concert series started, Mortyakova said she has seen a difference made in the recognition of women composers.
“We are literally creating this ripple effect and essentially taking over the world performing this music,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty people come here, they meet each other, they get inspired. … And then they go on to take it to their communities.”
The festival isn’t only for fans of classical music. Mortyakova said she intentionally programs each concert with a mixture of historic and contemporary music featured through different instrumentations.
On Thursday, a choir of 14 clarinets from East Tennessee State University performed. Friday morning’s concert opened with an original composition by University of Texas Rio Grande Valley student Noemi Sosa that told the biblical story of David and Goliath with a snare drum accompanied by electronic music. There’s something for everyone, Mortyakova said.
“Even if you don’t know about this topic or you don’t know anything about classical music, you’ll get to hear incredible musicians playing all kinds of different instruments,” she said.
Saturday will be the final day of the music festival, starting at 9 a.m. with lecture recitals, paper discussions and demonstrations in Poindexter Hall at MUW. The first concert will start at 10 a.m. followed by four more at noon, 3, 5, and 8 p.m. Concerts will also be live streamed on the festival’s Youtube page.
Mortyakova said one day there will hopefully be less of a need to focus so heavily on women in classical music, but until that representation is secured, she intends to continue the festival.
“Our goal is not to have the festival,” she said. “Our goal is that you go to a concert and you don’t think about gender because everybody’s equally represented. But until that day happens, we continue having this.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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