A 12th-century abbess gifted with extraordinary skills in medicine, science, and music.

“I thought that this was a piece that needed good tunes. And also, because it’s a concerto, you have to have some fast music in there. There are parts where I’m like, ‘Okay, let’s let it rip.'”

From the Composer’s Studio invites you to hear Missy Mazzoli and Jessie Montgomery, two of today’s most celebrated composers, provide a glimpse into their work. Enjoy this insightful, lively discussion co-produced by the CSOA and WFMT.

A Verdi and bel canto expert, Lyric’s new music director Enrique Mazzola will open the season with Verdi’s Macbeth and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, while also conducting contemporary opera Proving Up by Missy Mazzoli later in the season.

Riccardo Muti has appointed Jessie Montgomery as the Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery will succeed the CSO’s current composer-in-residence, Missy Mazzoli, in July of this year.

On a sunny March day, flutist Emma Gerstein, horn player Alexander Love, and pianist Winston Choi shared an upbeat recital featuring music you might not have heard before.

From Duke Ellington to Tamar-kali, these 12 composers have shaped what movies and TV sound like.

On a frigid day in February, music by Amy Beach, Ethel Smyth, and Luise Adolpha Le Beau brought us comfort and warmth.

The duo’s stirring performance was given to an empty audience but was broadcast via WFMT and WFMT’s social channels.

Among the canceled 2021 productions are Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, as well as a concert tribute to music director Sir Andrew Davis, who concludes his 20-year tenure at the end of this season.

From Cuba to Argentina, Uruguay to Mexico, Latin America has had no shortage of phenomenal composers. And while we are huge fans of Piazzolla and Villa-Lobos, we also love these lesser-known composers — and we think you will, too!

“For centuries, millennia, we humans have looked at the stars and wondered about our place in the universe and what’s beyond. That’s what I wanted to dig into,” reflects musician-composer-producer Caroline Shaw on her latest work, The Listeners.

We all love Sousa, Gershwin, and Copland. But what about the new(er) entrants to the canon of American classical composers? This Independence Day, we’ve compiled a playlist of just some of the vanguard voices redefining what American classical music sounds like.

From medieval times to modernity, women have made important contributions to all aspects of music, including as composers.

Anniversaries make up many of the highlights of the CSO’s annual summer residency.

Clara Schumann was one of the 19th century’s most celebrated composers and performers for the piano. Ahead of the 200th anniversary of her birth, celebrate her with a playlist of some of her greatest compositions.

In the eyes of tenor Nicholas Phan, living composers and the classical music genre of art song both face a similar obstacle: they’re often overlooked when it comes to programming and promoting classical music.

“You have these pieces of music that are part of you, part of your DNA, and every time you return to them, it just comes out differently because you are different.”

Over the span of just 9 months, Philadelphia Orchestra went from being one of the least representative orchestras of women composers to being the most.

Despite shifting tides, especially since the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements in 2017, women are often left out of the spotlight when it comes to leadership roles in film and music production.

Missy Mazzoli is a composer who is inspired by “weird stories,” and that’s a good thing. Her fascination with “humans who support, undermine, and love each other” has paved the way for opportunities in nearly every realm of the music industry. She is one of two women composers commissioned to write an opera for the Metropolitan Opera in New York …

Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti has appointed Missy Mazzoli as the orchestra’s new Mead Composer-in-Residence. Mazzoli will write a new work for the CSO, to be performed during the 2019-2020 season, and she will curate the orchestra’s Music Now concert series, plus give guidance for the programming of other contemporary music by the orchestra. Mazzoli’s compositions include two …

Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Irene Britton Smith, Nora Holt, and countless other women of color contributed to the Chicago Black Renaissance and changed classical music around the world.

The extraordinary story of Hildegard von Bingen.

If you’re looking to expand your own repertoire, why not explore the music of living composers? Check out these 10 composers changing contemporary classical music today who also all happen to be women.