Notable Women: A Celebration of Women Composers, takes the St. Luke’s annual contemporary music series Second Helpings and turns it into a festival over three weekends in June at the Chelsea Art Museum and Dia:Beacon, with three programs focusing on the work of American women composers over the past century. In addition, the three concerts will present world premieres of works commissioned by St. Luke’s in collaboration with the BMI Foundation and the Jerome Foundation.

The first program, “Unsung,” features pioneering composers from the early 20th century – the German Romantic-style music of Amy Beach (b. 1867) and modernist Ruth Crawford Seeger (b. 1901) is somewhat known, but that of post-Romantic Rebecca Clarke (b. 1886), and the serial work of Miriam Gideon (b. 1906), less so. The work of Asha Srinivasan the winner of a competition held by the OSL and the BMI Foundation (see below), has juxtaposed modal and modern language in intriguing ways.