Athena Festival is a biennial event celebrating women in music. [1] The festival is sponsored by the Department of Music at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. [2] The Athena festival strives to promote women composers and inspire young women with their musical aspirations [3]
In 2011, The Athena festival helped create the first all women 60x60 mix named after the festival. The 60x60 Athena Mix was curated and coordinated by Sabrina Peña Young. [4] [5] [6]
The theme of the 2013 Athena Festival is "Breaking Barriers—Finding Her Own Voice."
Paul Jerrod Pena was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist of Cape Verdean descent.
Girl power is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women's empowerment, independence, confidence and strength. The slogan's invention is credited to the US punk band Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Bikini Kill #2: Girl Power in 1991. It was then popularized in the mainstream by the British girl group Spice Girls in the mid-1990s. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Spice Girls' usage of "girl power" was one of the defining cultural touchstones that shaped the Millennial generation.
Marylhurst University was a private applied liberal arts and business university in Marylhurst, Oregon. It was among the oldest collegiate degree-granting institutions in Oregon, having awarded its first degree in 1897. Marylhurst was founded as St. Mary's College and run for many years by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. The former campus is located about nine miles south of Portland, Oregon on the Willamette River. Although Marylhurst University was a Roman Catholic school, it served students of all faiths and backgrounds.
Rosina Lhévinne was a Russian pianist and famed pedagogue born in Kyiv, Russian Empire.
Barbara Kopple is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work.
BandQuest is a series of band music for middle-level band commissioned and published by the American Composers Forum, a national non-profit composer service organization based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The series is exclusively distributed by Hal Leonard Corporation based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
60x60 is a collection of 60 electroacoustic or acousmatic works from 60 different composers/artists, each work 60 seconds or less in duration. 60x60 project showcases sixty new works, each sixty seconds or less, by sixty composers in a continuous sixty-minute concert, for a one-hour cross-section of contemporary music. The 60x60 project was conceived and developed by the new music consortium, Vox Novus and its founder, Robert Voisey.
Robert Voisey is a composer and producer of electroacoustic and chamber music. He founded Vox Novus in 2000 to promote the music of contemporary composers and in 2001 created The American Composer Timeline, the first in-depth listing of American composers, spanning from 1690 to the present, to appear on the Internet. A producer of new music and multi-media concerts and events, Voisey is best known for producing the 60x60 project, which he started in 2003 in order to promote contemporary composers and their music. He also founded and directs the Composer's Voice Concert Series as well as the chamber music project Fifteen Minutes of Fame as well as vice president of programs for the Living Music Foundation.
George Brunner is an American composer and performer born in Philadelphia. He has founded the International Electroacoustic Music Festival at Brooklyn College in 1995 where he has produced renowned composers such as Pauline Oliveros and Noah Creshevsky. He is also the founder of the Brooklyn College Electroacoustic Music Ensemble. Currently, he is the Director of the Music Technology Program for the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and on the faculty of the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM).
AXIS Dance Company is a professional physically integrated contemporary dance company and dance education organization founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California. It is one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities. Their work has received nine Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nine additional nominations for both their artistry and production values.
Habib Azar is an American film, theater and television director based in New York City. He married his wife, Carla Azar, in 2011, and they have two children.
Barbara Ann Rosenthal is an American avant-garde artist, writer and performer. Her existential themes have contributed to contemporary art and philosophy. Her pseudonyms include "Homo Futurus," taken from the title of one of her books and "Cassandra-on-the-Hudson," which alludes to "the dangerous world she envisions" while creating art in her studio and residence, located since 1998 on the Hudson River in Greenwich Village, NYC. She successfully trademarked "Homo Futurus" in 2022.
Harlem Quartet is a string quartet that was originally composed of first-place laureates of the Sphinx Competition for Black and Latino string players. They were formed in 2006. The members are first violinist Ilmar Gavilán, second violinist Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky. The Quartet won Best Instrumental Composition at the 2013 Grammy Awards for Mozart Goes Dancing.
Annette Arkeketa is a writer, poet, and playwright, and a member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma. She has conducted professional workshops in these fields, in addition to the creative process, script consulting, and documentary film making. She directed Native American film studies at Comanche Nation College.
Abbie Betinis is an American composer. She has composed music for a variety of musical ensembles, and is best known for her choral music and other vocal works.
"The Ruined Maid" is a satirical poem by Thomas Hardy. It was written in 1866 but first published, in a slightly bowdlerized form, in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901).
Sabrina Peña Young is an American composer and percussionist.
Unity: The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson, also known as Unity, is a collaborative musical project formed to create a Michael Jackson tribute album inspired by Latin music styles. The leader of the project is Peruvian-American musician Tony Succar, and vocals are provided by a number of leading artists in Latin music genres, especially salsa. Succar's aim with the project was to celebrate Jackson's music and legacy by combining it with a Latin-orchestrated sound. The stated goal is "to honor the legacy of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. By remaining true to his artistic essence, excellence, and music we seek to unify all human beings." Upon its release, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard Tropical Albums chart.
Anarchy Championship Wrestling (ACW) is a professional wrestling promotion based out of Austin, Texas, owned and operated by Darin Childs. They held their first official event on January 14, 2007 in San Antonio, Texas. The promotion has developed a reputation over the years for featuring hardcore wrestling in music venues and festivals, as well as the pioneering women's division, the "Joshi Division"