International Guitar Foundation: The Open Fund for Organisations
The guitar has traditionally been a very male-dominated instrument. IGF has a long-standing commitment to bringing change and including women in our guitar events and projects. Almost since IGF’s inception, we have been addressing this imbalance with special projects such as Girls Rock – a groundbreaking rock project in an all-women environment – and Venus and the Guitar. From the very beginning, our new music commissioning programme has included many women composers. We are now delighted to announce our latest project called La Leona, which will include 10 new works by women composers and feature women performers; the project will run for several years.
IGF will be using this grant to continue its commissioning work of music for guitar and the guitar in ensemble under the banner La Leona: 10 commissions & training for Women Music Creators & to inspire guitarists to create music. The focus is commissioning new music from composers at different stages of their careers. Six young music creators from a range of backgrounds have been selected: Atefeh Einali (Iranian heritage), Electra Perivolaris (Greek), Sarah Lianne Lewis, Florence Anna Maunders, Bethan Morgan Williams and Rockey Keting Sun (China), who are in their first five years as composers from Scotland, Wales, the North West and London. The mid-career composers include Effy Efthymiou, Litha Efthymiou and Laura Snowden, and leading composer Errollyn Wallen, who has had a commissioning relationship with the IGF for over two decades, dating back to 1998.