Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Pioneer Sketches
for Chamber Orchestra
NEW
Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Pioneer Sketches
for Chamber Orchestra
- Instrumentation Chamber Orchestra
- Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad
- Edition Score
- Publisher Chester Music
- Order no. CH88482
ships within 2-4 weeks
Description:
A chamber orchestral piece celebrating the lives of five extraordinary women from recent history. This twelve-minute work runs continuously, but has five distinct movements: i) Hedy Lamarr – This 1940s Hollywood actress co-patented frequency-hopping technology during WWII, designed to prevent enemy jamming of radio-controlled torpedoes. Listen for short musical messages that are first continually disrupted, then transmitted in full, thanks to Hedy’s groundbreaking invention. ii) Rosalind Franklin – The English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to understanding the molecular structure of DNA is commemorated in a slow movement where chords gradually thin out to reveal their inner ‘molecular’ structures. iii) Mary Anning – Angular melodies in the strings depict this hardy, tireless fossil hunter and pioneering palaeontologist, out on the beach in all weathers searching for discoveries along the shores of Lyme Regis. iv) Katsuko Saruhashi – Listen for the raindrops on windowpanes that so fascinated Katsuko — the Japanese geochemist whose research on radioactive fallout contributed significantly to international efforts to restrict above-ground nuclear testing — as a child. v) Katherine Johnson – The mathematician whose trajectory calculations were critical to the success of NASA’s early space missions, including Apollo 11, is celebrated in a quasi-waltz that feels as if it is in two time-signatures at once. Short musical cells from the opening, this time representing Katherine’s myriad calculations, return to bring the work to its conclusion. CFH, 2026