Kaleidoscope – Contemporary Piano Music by Female Composers from around the World

Spanish pianist Dr Isabel Dobarro has an active international performing career and has performed and lectured at some of the most renowned venues in the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the European Parliament, the National Auditorium in Madrid and the Palau de la Música Catalana, among many others. Her work as an advocate for female composers has been recognised with several awards, and she has been invited to speak at the Women Now Conference together with Her Majesty Queen Letizia of Spain and film producer Kathleen Kennedy. In 2016 together with mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna, Isabel Dobarro created the Women in Music Project, an initiative that promotes music composed by women from around the world.

Suad Bushnaq, a dual Canadian-Jordanian citizen of Bosnian, Palestinian and Syrian heritage, is a four-time Canadian Screen Awards nominated, and Hollywood Music in Media Award-winning composer whose versatile style spans a number of genres. With more than 40 film credits to date, she has scored award-winning features and shorts that have screened at festivals including La Biennale di Venezia, Locarno, Hot Docs and Edinburgh. She was competitively selected for the Festival de Cannes ‘Spot the Composer’ programme, and the SESAC film scoring residency in Los Angeles where she was mentored by composer Christophe Beck. Other awards Bushnaq has received include a Best Original Score at the Fine Arts Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Yoko Kanno is a lyric and song writer, arranger and music producer. Kanno has created music for movies, TV dramas, TV commercials, animation and video games. She has also produced and written music for many artists.

Tania León is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator and advisor to arts organisations. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2022, she was named a recipient of the 45th Annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievement. In 2023, she was awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University.

The Argentinean composer Claudia Montero emerged as one of the most outstanding and acclaimed composers in Latin America. She was born in Buenos Aires in 1962 and later settled in Valencia, Spain until her passing in January 2021.

Carolyn Morris is an Australian composer based in Melbourne, Australia. With her music, she aims to spark the imagination of both the performer and listener. Many of her compositions are inspired by nature, and seek to communicate the essence of the human spirit and uplift the audience. Morris has composed music for chamber orchestra, choir, solo instruments, voice and chamber groups.

Nkeiru Okoye is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. She was born in New York, NY, and raised on Long Island. After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting and Africana Studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers.

Latin GRAMMY-nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today. A recipient of several honours and awards, her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk and popular music in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways, achieving a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity.

Carme Rodríguez grew up in a musical environment and studied piano, singing, guitar and percussion. She is a versatile composer, orchestrator, arranger and multi-instrumentalist. Rodríguez graduated in 2018 with honours in Contemporary Music Composition at the Transforming Arts Institute (TAI University) in Madrid.

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist and vocalist. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several GRAMMY Awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

The prize-winning composer, Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980, Plovdiv, Bulgaria), has lived in London since 1991, graduating from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and obtaining a PhD from King’s College London. Her music has featured in films, dance and has been programmed at festivals across Europe and the US.

Karen Tanaka is a versatile composer and pianist. She studied composition with Akira Miyoshi at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, Tristan Murail in Paris, and Luciano Berio in Florence.

Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.