Weaving Voices – a concert by Eleanor Ryan and Jeremy Thurlow

Sun 22 January 2023

Clare Hall

Eleanor Ryan (Violin) and Jeremy Thurlow (Piano) present a rich tapestry of music written for violin and piano by female composers spanning the baroque era to the present day. The programme intentionally seeks to weave short works in conversation with each other across styles, temporalities and locations, inspired by one of the offerings, T?rua by New Zealand/Aotearoa composer Dame Gillian Whitehead. T?rua, from te reo Ma?ri, has multiple meanings: it signifies a change in wind or current, it is the name given to a weaving pattern, and its third meaning is ‘twofold’ or ‘double thickness’, reflecting both the two-fold of duo voices and the enrichment of voices and knowledge in conversation. In weaving together multiple compositional female voices from past and present, this concert highlights the often-overlooked depth and flow of women’s creative voices in art music over time.

In this concert, Baroque era composers Isabella Leonarda and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre are interwoven with the Romantic-era offerings of Louise Ferrenc and Clara Schumann. Lili Boulanger and Amy Beach, writing in the first decades of the twentieth century, are in conversation across the Atlantic, and present-day composers – the USA-based British composers Anna Clyne and Angela Morley, in conversation with New Zealand/Aotearoa composer Dame Gillian Whitehead, speak to the diversity, invention and entrepreneurship of modern-day female voices.

Cost: £5-£20