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Women Composers Readings and Commissions Program

Congratulations to 2015 commission recipients Andreia Pinto-Correia and Xi Wang, each receiving orchestral commissions of $15,000.

The League of American Orchestras' Women Composers Readings and Commissions program is administered with the American Composers Orchestra and EarShot and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

This year's program included readings with Buffalo Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony, and American Composers Orchestra. The program featured career development workshops, as well as mentoring opportunities with composers such as Robert Beaser, Derek Bermel, Rob Deemer, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kevin Puts, Ken Ueno, and Melinda Wagner. Adjudicators for the commission awards were composers Melinda Wagner and Chen Yi, and conductor Joana Carneiro.

Andreia Pinto-Correia and Xi Wang have been selected to receive orchestral commissions of $15,000 each. Partner orchestras to premiere the works will be announced at a later date.

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SMU Professor Uses Music to Bridge Cultures

by Sarah Bennett · November 10, 2015

While Xi Wang was a growing up in China, her parents borrowed a piano from the museum where her father worked so she could play and practice.

They had been sent to the countryside as labor workers during the Cultural Revolution, so they valued any chance for their only child to expand her education.

"I showed good memory to melodies and to tunes," she said. "My parents thought classical music was such a beautiful thing, and they knew nothing about it. They wanted me to study something they considered high class."

Eventually, the family borrowed money from relatives to buy their own piano for Xi to play.

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