Composers and musicians Nadia and Lili Boulanger, namesakes of the Boulanger Initiative, in 1913.
“The Boulanger Initiative (BI) launched its BIPOC, Women, and Gender Marginalized Composers Repertoire Database on March 13,” writes Afton Wooten in Tuesday’s (3/14) Opera Wire (U.K.). “Boulanger Initiative’s Database aids those who wish to diversify classical music programming by providing information on underrepresented composers. BI spent years researching archives, compiling data, and testing beta versions of the database to create this much-needed resource. Each entry includes the composer name(s), country and/or state of origin, and birth-to-death date ranges, as well as composition types, instruments, voice types, and languages. Currently, the database has over 8,000 available works by 1,200 women and gender-marginalized (‘non-cis-male, including trans and/or non-binary’) composers, available for free. As of now, the focus is on historical works with expansion to come for performance repertoire from multiple time periods. Also to come are recordings of affiliated musicians and composers. Other features will be filters for difficulty levels, themes, and other descriptive tags. BID director Emily Morin said in a press release, ‘building this database is about breaking down barriers…. Boulanger Initiative’s Database … will expand access to information about gender-marginalized composers and their music.’ ” The Boulanger Initiative is based in North Bethesda, Maryland. Learn more at https://www.boulangerinitiative.org/.
