STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Joel Bejot will present a piano and organ concert featuring works written by women this weekend. The free concert--part of the St. Thomas Chamber Music Series—will start at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 24 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 201 Sun Valley Road in Sun Valley.
Bejot, director of music at St. Thomas, will feature works by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Emma Lou Diemer, Nadia Boulanger and Rachel Laurin. The works are “just as inspiring, interesting, moody, and triumphant as any work written by a composer you have heard of,” he says.
Fanny Mendelssohn, who lived from 1805 to 1847, was a German composer who wrote more than 460 pieces of music—many of them in the “Songs without Words” genre. Her brother Felix Mendelssohn later became famous for this genre but some believe it was Fanny who pioneered the music form.
Emma Lou Diemer is an American composer who became organist in her church at 13 and who has even written electronic music.
Nadia Boulanger was a French music teacher and conductor who taught such musicians as Gabriel Faure. And Rachel Laurin is a Canadian organist and composer living in Quebec who has composed more than a hundred works.