Hello and welcome to the Corelia Project! More than 2 years in the making, we are so excited to finally be sharing this website with you. We are here to help shift the huge gender imbalance that still exists in classical music programming around the world.
We wanted to share a bit about how this project got started and what it's all about...
The idea for the Corelia Project began when we were finishing our postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music, London. While planning what to play in our end-of-year recitals, we each decided to explore what repertoire was available that had been composed by women. After some basic research we began to uncover hundreds of exceptional works that we had never heard of before!! We couldn’t understand why these pieces are not making their way onto concert programmes. During our research, we realised that the information we had been collecting about these composers and their works could be helpful to others seeking to diversify their own repertoire.
And so the Corelia Project was born!
It quickly became clear that lots of our fellow musicians were equally interested in performing underrepresented works but there wasn’t a quick and easy way to discover what was out there. It can take many hours to discover if a composer has written for your instrument, whether there’s a recording to listen to, and then try to find a score…
We have created a database tailored towards inquisitive musicians, making it as simple as possible to discover pieces and composers that might inspire you. You will find composer profiles, and a big repertoire library of pieces (with info about year of composition, duration, instrumentation, recording, publisher, and where to find the score.)
Time to explore and discover something new!!
Our goal is for this database to eventually encompass as much repertoire as humanly possible. As we are currently a two-person team, we have narrowed down our focus to featuring solo, chamber, and concerto music. You might notice that there is a lot of music involving clarinet and woodwind on here at the moment - that’s because our initial research was finding pieces that we could play ourselves. That research expanded to all instruments and we are now proud to have over 1,200 pieces on the list… and we know we are barely scratching the surface!!
We are constantly adding to this library so we can share the love with all instrumentalists and vocalists who want to discover pieces by women composers. So if you are not a woodwind musician, do not fret!! Make sure to keep checking in to see what exciting new pieces have been added.
If you have been doing similar research and would like to join forces with us, we’d love to hear from you!! And of course if you are a composer that would like to be featured on the website, please get in touch via the form on our Contact page.
This is just the beginning of the Corelia Project - we have big plans for the future! Our next stop is to launch the Corelia Concerts series in London, which we will be sharing more details about soon…
In the meantime, feel free to drop us a line and say hello!
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