SHE PERSISTED. The ECCO will perform a show highlighting and honoring five women composers on March 16.

The Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) will feature the works of five female composers at its next concert titled, “She Persisted: A Celebration of Women Composers” on Saturday, March 16 at 7:30pm at the Pablo Center (128 Graham Avenue, Eau Claire).

Music Director Dr. Frank Watkins will conduct compositions by Augusta Holmès (1847-1903), Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953), Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), and Jessie Montgomery (1981-present).

The concert will open with Holmès Irelande, one of her infamous symphonic poems alluding to the historical troubles of the oppressed people of Ireland hoping for future independence. Next in the program will be Music for Small Orchestra, composed by Seeger. Concluding the first half of the concert will be Strum: Music for Strings created by Montgomery, also a violinist educator and winner of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publisher Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein award. Opening the second half of the program is Boulanger’s Of a Spring Morning. The concert will conclude with Bonds’ Montgomery Variations, a piece composed in the wake of the firebombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama.

To purchase tickets, visit pablocenter.org.