Walker, born in 1947, grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut. She attended Brown University and the Hartt School of Music, ultimately receiving a DMA in music composition. She taught for fourteen years, ending her academic career at Oberlin College Conservatory. After which she moved to a dairy farm in Vermont, where she now resides as an independent composer. While she has composed many songs and choral works, there are some instrumental chamber works, orchestra works, and two concertos for violin and orchestra. Texts with personal and emotional meaning are an important part of her musical inspiration, and her accessible musical style reflects just that. Typical of her inherent warmth is a charming photo on her website with some of her dairy cows. She is a proud descendant of Quaker immigrants, and there is an innate aura of the spiritual in much of her music. That, along with her early background in guitar and American folk music, informs much of our encounter with her art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seems central for her that people, nature, and her ethical commitment to the \u201cgood\u201d as most understand it is inherent in art. She also does have a strong sense of humor. She is a life-long tennis enthusiast, and her Match Point <\/em>for band or orchestra requires that the conductor conduct with a tennis racket and the percussions use yellow tennis balls!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Time to Vote<\/em> was given its premi\u00e8re by the Cheyenne, Wyoming Symphony in 2021. Written in 2019, it celebrates the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the passage of the 19th<\/sup> amendment in 1920, granting women the right to vote.\u00a0 There are three movements, \u201cCelebrate,\u201d \u201cGathering Strength,\u201d and \u201cLooking Forward\u2014Failure is Impossible!\u201d\u00a0 The work was inspired, in the composer\u2019s words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c . . . by the efforts and achievements of the women (and men) of the past who worked so tirelessly to gain the women\u2019s right to vote. These were the Suffragettes, their supporters, and those who came before. All praise be given!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCelebrate,\u201d is just that, opening with a quiet rhythmic pattern in the cymbal and conga drum, leading to a fanfare in the horns and trumpets over the throbbing strings. Soon the mood changes a bit (but not the rhythmic drive) to a minor key with woodwind solos. Not for long, for the cheerful major and the percussion return to lead us through some interesting key changes. Cascading scales and glissandos in the glockenspiel, joined by more percussion lead to the exuberant ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The serene beginning of the second movement, but in a brisk tempo, features a solo clarinet, soon joined by other voices. Musical ideas and soloists engage in a kind of conversation, their individual identities gradually joining together\u2014just as human ideas grow together. But a pensive, ruminative recitative in the \u201csolitary\u201d clarinet, enveloped softly in a string cluster brings us to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last movement begins with a soft tom-tom, \u201cstarting a slow walk to the future,\u201d soon joined by the snare drum. The bassoon \u201cwalks\u201d for a while, and the theme of the future is heard in the three trumpets. The movement builds with confidence, featuring the \u201cfuture\u201d of the trumpets, bolstered by exuberant horns. Gradually, all join in, as the orchestra marches to the future, taking up the horn theme. The pace incrementally picks up, and the general triumph at the end is bolstered by \u201ccelebratory\u201d chimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n –Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a92021 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[320],"class_list":["post-1279","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-gwyneth-walker"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}