Natalia Merlano Gomez began her career like many talented children – performing at home while family members watched from couches and chairs during reunions and special gatherings.
Born and raised in Colombia, Gomez’s love of music has taken her to Germany, San Diego, California, and this week to Columbus, where she performed at the 10th annual International Music by Women Festival.
The opportunity to connect with musicians from around the world, Gomez said, has become one of the most rewarding parts of her career.
“I really like how places like this, we come here with an excuse – that is the music,” she told The Dispatch on Thursday. “Music is the excuse to move around, but at the end of the day, … all these kinds of events, what it shows me the most is the need we have as humans to create community, to interact with other people. … I think it’s something very nice about this country, that you can find people from all around the world.”
The festival, hosted annually in Kossen Auditorium in Poindexter Hall at Mississippi University for Women, began Thursday morning and concludes tonight with a final concert at 8. Roughly 150 performers across the United States and three countries are presenting works composed exclusively by women.
Artistic Director Julia Mortyakova said the festival was created in response to the lack of female composers represented in classical music concerts and curriculum. Similar festivals exist worldwide, she said, but The W’s history as the first state-supported institution for women made it a natural home for a festival of its own.
“This is a movement,” Mortyakova said. “… It’s an international festival, so people take the music back to their own communities, and so you see these same performances and pieces … in other professional music organizations. … We’re like little ripples in the ocean, little waves that spread, and that was the whole idea of the festival.”
That shared mission has helped the festival grow, drawing both first-time performers and returning musicians.
Building a network
Gomez said her own interest in female composers began while she was an undergraduate student in Colombia, when she noticed that most composers she studied were “white, dead men.”
“There are many collectives who … need to know more about what women are doing and also we need to find spaces like this … to know that we are here and we are together, and we need to keep doing this until it’s not needed anymore,” she said. “I feel also that if those kind of spaces exist, it’s because we haven’t reached the point where things are equal.”
Asher Armstrong, a piano faculty member at University of Toronto and York University in Canada, said he had a similar realization more than 10 years into his own musical studies.
“I started doing more research and listening and … trying to incorporate more music by women in my teaching and in my playing,” Armstrong said. “People … had mentioned this as being a big gathering of like-minded people. … I think this is great, and we need this to level the playing feel, so to speak, but ideally at some point, it wouldn’t be necessary.”
Pianists Grzegorz Mania and Piotr Rozanski, both of Poland, returned to the festival Thursday for their fourth consecutive year. Both professors of music at universities in Poland, the pair discovered the festival online while searching for events focused on female composers.
“We always try to include (in our repertoire) composers in history that were wronged by some reason,” Mania said. “… We have some composers who emigrated and we lost track of them. We have, of course, female composers. We have, generally, composers from the 19th century that dared not to be as good as Chopin, so they were forgotten.”
Mania, who runs his own festival celebrating female composers through the Polish Chamber Musicians’ Association, said he continues to find inspiration each year at The W.
“You would think I would know a few (female composers’) names, but still I come here and I learn so much more about repertoire and about other names from different countries,” Mania said.
“It’s kind of a network of information, people (and) composers,” Rozanski added. “Because you cannot know everything, that’s for sure. But you can get familiar with things through this program. … That’s how you discover. (There are) plenty of compositions, a lot of composers, very interesting music. Of course, you cannot attend everything. It’s too much, but it’s all very inspiring.”
Devan Lott-Knipe, a junior studying music composition at The W, said the festival offers a “safe community” for musicians from all walks of life.
“It’s kind of overwhelming, in a way,” she said Thursday, sitting on the steps of Poindexter Hall. “I’m awestruck because these people come all the way here. It just goes to show how people need connection everywhere. … I may never see these people again, but we got to experience something together, that if we weren’t all here together at this time, we wouldn’t have anywhere else.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
