Woman Composer Sunday

James Bowstead, Interim Director of Music at Wakefield Cathedral

Sunday 05 March is designated this year as Woman Composer Sunday, an initiative started in 2021 by the Society of Women Organists to encourage choirs and organists to perform music by female composers on the Sunday closest to International Women’s Day (08 March).

The majority of the music which the choir will be singing on Sunday has been composed by female composers, including several pieces new to the choir, all of which will make fantastic additions and will increase the diversity of the choir’s repertoire.  At the 09:15 Eucharist the anthem will be Mary Plumstead’s ‘A grateful heart’, and at the 11:00 Eucharist it will be Edie Hill’s ‘For God so loved the world’.

Also at the 11:00 Eucharist, the choir will sing Ghislaine Reece-Trapp’s Mass for the Mystery of Faith, which was first performed by the BBC Singers at a concert marking International Women’s Day 2022.

At Evensong, the music will include Amy Beach’s Nunc Dimittis and Imogen Holst’s ‘A Hymne to Christ’.  The organ voluntaries at all three service will also be by female composers, including a work by the current Master of the King’s Music, Judith Weir, the first women to hold that position.

All welcome.