Left to right: Apache 61, June Boyce-Tillman, Deirdre Gribbin and Sense of Sound

The first six winners of WiM Commissioning Fund awards were announced in April 2001. They were:

• London Musicians Collective who broke new ground for their annual festival of experimental music, which in 2001 had an all female programme. The award enabled LMC to bring important artists from all over the world to perform in London. See LMC Festival page for full details.  
• Dr June Boyce-Tillman's Magnificat Project, commissioning an intriguing range of women composers to set the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis texts. These tracts are traditionally used for performance in cathedral services all over England. This is an initiative which is bound to get people talking, both for its verve and its simplicity, with a potential 'audience' of 1000's; The Magnificat was originally sung by a woman delighting in her pregnancy yet women's music is rarely heard in churches.
• Deirdre Gribbin who will use the money to develop her own ensemble, Gribbin Music. Her project, Notes on the Edge, is a collaboration with fellow Belfast expat Bernard McLaverty bringing his book about the fictional composer Catherine McKenna to life in an exploration of the creative process. It combines music and spoken word thus having performance possibilities at both music and literature festivals.
• Sense of Sound, who will extend their already impressive vocal and performance training programme into a wider community context to create a performance piece for live and internet performance. The workshop and creation process will be developed into a package that will be able to be used by other community voice projects.
• Karen Wimhurst always thinks big from her days working with the English National Opera and the piece that the Commission Fund will support is no exception. Entitled 'The Last Flight' it involves circus performers, simulated birds and an orchestra, with its first performance scheduled for Peter Jay's Hippodrome at Great Yarmouth in 2004! Women in Music is contributing seed funding as a lever to other investors.
• Rachel Stott has a plan to tour a musical setting of the Chaucer's Wife of Bath's tale along the Canterbury pilgrim's route involving cathedral girls' choirs. Women in Music is giving her money for a feasibility study.

"I am delighted by the list" said Kathryn McDowell, who heads up the Wales Millennium Centre. "It should make a real difference to the profile of Women in Music and I look forward to each of the projects with eager anticipation".

Women in Music would like to thank our panel Kathryn McDowell, Fiona Ellis, Jane Wynn Owen, Dj Ritu, Diane Charlemagne, Lesley Willis and Debbie Golt who carried out a long process with excellent support from Clare Adams and Kathryn Deane of Sound Sense. Special thanks also go to Jane Wells who did stirling work clarifying our objectives at the beginning. The commissions come into fruition at different times over the next period and Women in Music will offer as much support as possible.

Debbie Golt
(Chair of Women in Music in 2001)

WiM Commissioning Fund
(At-a-glance guide to who gets what)

£7000 - London Musician's Collective for all women festival
£6000 - Dierdre Gribbin for Notes on the Edge
£5000 - Karen Wimhurst for The Last Flight
£7000 - June Boyce-Tillman for Magnificat Project
£7000 - Sense of Sound for workshop and performance project
£1000 - Rachel Stott for feasibility study

Further details of the awards will be posted at this site as they become available