The Society for American Music recently announced that Dr. Wilson Kimber was the recipient of its 2020 Sight and Sound Subvention!

You can read more about the 2020 SAM award winners here, and Dr. Wilson Kimber’s video project is described below. Congratulations, Marian!

“In a Woman’s Voice: Musical Readings by American Women Composers”

Will be a video recording of musical readings for spoken word and piano by women composers, performed by  Marian Wilson Kimber, reciter, and Natalie Landowski, piano.

The project is based on the work in Wilson Kimber’s book, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word  (University of Illinois Press, 2017).

The influx of female performers into elocution during the Progressive era resulted in women’s dominance of spoken-word compositions, which were frequently performed for audiences in women’s clubs from the 1890s to the 1940s. The texts treat stereotypically feminine topics—fashion, courtship, or domestic life—often in satirical tones, supported by musical commentary in the piano.

Composers such as Phyllis Fergus and Frieda Peycke created works that specifically appealed to women while subtly resisting existing gender norms. Wilson Kimber and Landowski have been performing these works for several years to warm response in academic settings and for the music’s original audience, women’s groups; this recording will help further the rediscovery of this practice.