Performance by Mariam Adam & Ji Hye Jung
Mariam Adam & Ji Hye Jung, directors
April 10th, 2025 @ 8:00pm
Turner Hall, Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Professors Mariam Adam and Ji Hye Jung will commission a new chamber music piece for Clarinet and Percussion Duo by Errollyn Wallen. This project will not only enrich the performing arts by expanding the repertoire for clarinet and percussion, but it will also help encourage women composers working in a historically male dominated field. As two leading classical female performers, our synergy will show the pacesetting the industry needs while contributing to the repertoire as a legacy point.
For Vanderbilt University, it publicly identifies our institution as a forward-thinking collaborator in the arts, anxious to spur the conception of new music. This project signals that we are contenders in recognizing the need for better representation of women in classical music with a collaborative effort to ensure the legacy of the Colloquium. Our premiere performances of the new work will expand into a set of events—through the innovative model of an “INFORMANCE” presentation—which will engage with Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff, as well as the larger Nashville community, including a lecture by the composer and/or an interview with both the composer and the performers, and an exhibition of visual artifacts associated with the new piece.
Errollyn Wallen is a multi-award-winning Belize-born British composer and performer. Her prolific output includes twenty-two operas and a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber and vocal works which are performed and broadcast throughout the world. She was the first black woman to have a work featured in the Proms and the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello award for Classical Music for her body of work. Errollyn composed for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games 2012, for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, a specially commissioned song for the climate change conference, COP 26, 2021, and a re-imagining of Jerusalem for BBC’s Last Night of the Proms 2020. She is one of the top 20 most performed living composers of classical music in the world.