Known as the “valkyrie of the piano,” Teresa Carreño was a Venezuelan concert pianist, singer, and composer. Born in Caracas, Carreño and her family moved to New York when the musician was still a child in response to growing political instability. Spending time in both New York and Paris during her upbringing, Carreño was able to pursue an international musical career. She became one of the first female pianists to tour the United States, quickly becoming a role model for subsequent generations of American woman musicians. As a composer, Carreño wrote around 80 works, many of which were for the piano and performed herself in concert.

Fun fact: In 1863, when Carreño was still a child, she performed for Abraham Lincoln at the White House. Decades later, in 1916, she returned to the White House to perform for Woodrow Wilson.

French composer and organist Fernande Decruck made her gift for music known early on in life. Having won several prestigious accolades by her teens, Decruck entered the Paris Conservatory, where she excelled in composition and piano studies. As she began to make her mark as a working professional, Decruck spent a period of time touring throughout the United States, giving impressive concerts on the organ where she would improvise for the audience. This period in the U.S. also proved fruitful for composing, resulting in many new works for piano and organ, as well as her first works for saxophone—Decruck’s husband, Maurice, played the instrument and successfully earned a position playing with the New York Philharmonic.

After returning to France, Decruck continued to devote her life to music: composing, performing, and teaching. Despite her successful career, her legacy fell into obscurity following her death and has only recently begun gaining attention once more.

Grażyna Bacewicz was a Polish-Lithuanian violinist, pianist, and composer who created a unique path for herself (at least for a woman at the time) by pursuing performance and composition on relatively equal terms. Having studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Bacewicz would go on to premiere many of her own works in concert. The bulk of her catalog consisted of chamber music works, particularly music written for strings. She became well-known and appreciated in her native Poland but had a harder time breaking down barriers on the international stage. Unfortunately, for the last 15 years of her life, Bacewicz was forced to retire from performing and focus exclusively on composition because of injuries suffered from a car accident.

Fun fact: In addition to writing music, Bacewicz also wrote novels and short stories.

Trailblazing American composer Joan Tower’s career has spanned more than sixty years, making a significant mark on the world of classical music in the States and beyond. When asked about her musical voice, Tower has responded, “My music is about rhythm, predominantly, the rhythm of ideas. And it’s also organic, and it has a large-scale narrative…  It’s also very important for me to be clear: I don’t think my music ever gets complicated enough that you don’t hear everything.”

In 2020, Tower was chosen as “Composer of the Year” by Musical America, and in 2019, the League of American Orchestras awarded her its highest honor, the Gold Baton. She currently serves as the Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972. All Classical Radio listeners likely know Tower best for Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is dedicated to women who take risks and who are adventurous.

Born into a family of artists and intellectuals, Victoria Yagling was a Russian cellist and composer who made a name for herself as a major force in the USSR. Unfortunately, she would have to wait until 1990 to break beyond her native barriers when she was able to emigrate to Finland. While continuing to compose, Yagling also taught cello at the Jean Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Unsurprisingly, her works for the string instrument have become the most prominent part of Yagling’s compositional legacy. Stylistically, her music embodies a Romantic essence unmistakably born out of the influence of her fellow Russian predecessors, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Errollyn Wallen CBE is a Belize-born British composer who recently became the first Black woman to be appointed Master of the King’s Music, an honor that endorses her exceptional musical contributions. Wallen’s works have also been performed at the BBC Proms, the 2012 Paralympic Games, and the late Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees. As an emerging composer in the 1980s, Wallen struggled with breaking down barriers for women in the field, especially women of color. Consequently, she co-founded, along with other female composers, musicians, and administrators, the organization Women in Music, promoting works by underrepresented voices in the field.

As a composer, Wallen has written over 20 operas in addition to a large catalog of works for orchestra and chamber ensemble.

Based in Los Angeles, Indian-American composer Reena Esmail connects the worlds of Indian and Western classical soundscapes in her music. With a focus on works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and choir, Esmail uses her music to address humanity in art and create a sense of belonging and inclusivity among its listeners. After earning degrees from both The Julliard School and Yale School of Music, she subsequently sought a return to her cultural roots and attained a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India.

Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2025 Swan Family Artist in Residence. She also currently serves as Artistic Director of Shastra, an organization that fosters cross-cultural dialogue between Western music and the music of India. In 2022, Esmail’s life and career were featured on an episode of the PBS Great Performances series, “Now Hear This.”

Naomi LaViolette is an American composer, pianist, and singer-songwriter whose music is influenced not only by her classical education but also by her study of jazz, folk songs, soul, pop, and gospel. As a singer, Naomi attributes songwriting in her early 20s as a way to process strong emotions and experiences. With four albums of original music under her belt and many more singles, Naomi writes songs filled “with the stories, emotions, celebrations, and struggles of what it means to be human.”

LaViolette is based in Portland, OR, and has collaborated with several local organizations. Since 2004, she has been the pianist for the Oregon Repertory Singers, in addition to working with the Oregon Symphony as a songwriter and arranger for The Lullaby Project. Her work with Saving His Music, a project preserving the music of a talented pianist suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, received prominent coverage both locally and across the country.

Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in Drummondville, Ontario, a community founded by freedom-seekers who escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Dett received a substantial musical education, first from Oberlin Conservatory where he was the first person of African descent to graduate with a double major in piano and composition, followed by a master’s degree from Eastman School of Music many years later. A significant part of Dett’s legacy lies in his work as a choral conductor at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), where he led the program to a new level of artistic achievement and excellence. As a composer, he published around 100 works, many of which were arrangements of folksongs and spirituals written for the Hampton choir.   

Recommended recording: The piano suite, In the Bottoms, performed by pianist Luke Welch on the album, Northern Magnolias: Robert Nathaniel Dett Piano Works.

American composer Dorothy Rudd Moore knew from a young age that she wanted to compose, a dream that was lovingly supported by her family. Following this dream with persistence, Moore became one of her generation’s leading female composers of color. As a composer, she wrote works for chamber ensemble, piano, and orchestra, in addition to art songs and an opera. Moore also played an essential role in uplifting Black artists by co-founding the Society of Black Composers in 1968 alongside her husband, cellist Kermit Moore. Her work as an educator at several New York-based institutions inspired a new generation of up-and-coming musicians.

Recommended recording: 3 Pieces for Violin & Piano performed by Dawn Wohn (violin) and Emely Phelps (piano) on the album, Unbounded: Music by American Women.

East London native Shirley J. Thompson is a pioneering composer whose music has been claimed as “the present and future of British classical music.” Despite a string of successes early on in her career, Thompson was shut out of the classical music world for many years, during which time she worked in television and composed on the side. However, by the early 2000s, Thompson began establishing herself once more as a compositional force and welcomed a long list of prestigious commissions, including a symphony for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. In 2019, Thompson received an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for her contributions to music. Her works for orchestra, stage, chamber ensemble, TV, and film are performed all over the world.

Recommended recording: “Marshes, Hamlets and Roaming Cows,” the first movement of Thompson’s innovative symphony, New Nation Rising, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on the album, New Nation Rising: A 21st Century Symphony.

Stewart Goodyear is a Canadian pianist and composer whose prestige on the keyboard instrument has long garnered attention, including his infamous “sonathons” where he performs all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in one day. Goodyear’s work writing music, on the other hand, is a more recent development in his career trajectory. However, in doing so, Goodyear joins a long lineage of concert pianist-composers in classical music, such as W. A. Mozart, Clara Schumann, and Sergei Rachmaninov. Goodyear channels his virtuosic piano playing into many of his own works and regularly programs them in concerts alongside well-known classical music standards, proving the genre’s timeless influence and merit.

Recommended recording: The Kapok for Cello and Piano performed by Inbal Segev (cello) and Stewart Goodyear (piano) on the album, 20 for 2020 Volume IV.

Los Angeles-based composer Derrick Skye has made a name for himself integrating musical practices and connections across cultures from around the world into his work. A student of West African drumming and dance, Persian classical music, Hindustani classical music, Balkan music theory, and more, Skye layers outwardly disparate traditions into groundbreaking works for the concert hall. He uses rhythm, and the embodiment of rhythm through movement, as a unifying feature for much of his music, often collaborating with choreographers and even synchronized swimmers. Skye’s compositional oeuvre includes works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and film.

Recommended recording: The orchestra work, Prisms, Cycles, Leaps, performed by Bridge to Everywhere on the album, Prisms, Cycles, Leaps.

Jon Batiste is a musical artist of many trades – singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, and TV personality. Batiste rose to prominence as the musical director for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015-2022, though he has been releasing recordings of his works since 2005 (several of which have won Grammy Awards). Batiste grew up in Louisiana, the son of a jazz musician and professional singer, and was consequently exposed to a wide variety of musical influences throughout his upbringing. Since emerging on the professional scene, Batiste has redefined what it means to be a modern-day musician and is consistently breaking down barriers. In 2020, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for the Disney/Pixar film, Soul. The film also earned Batiste a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an NAACP Image Award, and a Critic’s Choice Award.

Recommended recording: Chopinesque performed by Jon Batiste on the album, Hollywood Africans.