One-Woman Show About Canadian Composer

Kathleen Shimeta Portrays Gena Branscombe on Stage

Oct 14, 2008

Singer Kathleen Shimeta was so inspired by a one-woman show about suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she wrote her own show about composer Gena Branscombe.

"She was such a wonderful woman as well as being a terrific composer...I felt guided to do something to bring her music to the attention of present-day audiences."

Kathleen Shimeta, concert, opera and oratorio singer, speaks about the Canadian composer whose life and career she portrays in her one-woman show "Life, Love, Song! A Visit with Gena Branscombe."

Gena Branscombe

Branscombe was born in Picton, Ontario, in 1881 and died in New York City in 1977. She was a student of piano with Rudolf Ganz and went to Europe for further work with the celebrated composer Engelbert Humperdinck. Her works encompass many genres: symphonic works, a sonata for violin and piano, piano pieces and a great number of vocal compositions. She was certainly the most prolific Canadian composer of her time.

Life! Love! Song!

Shimeta's show about Gena Branscombe begins with Gena waiting for a writer to come and interview her about her life. She tries to remember everything of importance so that when the interviewer arrives she will be ready. She thinks about many of the things that happened to her: her marriage to John Tenney, the death of their little daughter Betty during the influenza epidemic of 1919, the birth of their other three daughters, the founding of the Branscombe Choral in New York City in 1934 and the fact that she composed up to the year 1973 when she was ninety-two years old. During the performance, mezzo-soprano Kathleen Shimeta sings fifteen of Branscombe's beautiful songs.

Kathleen Shimeta

Shimeta was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended high school and college in St.Cloud, Minnesota, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree. Following college she attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied voice with the late Jon Spong. Kathleen gravitated toward performing, believing that she was not suited to teaching.

During her singing career she has appeared in opera and oratorio, as well as in recital. Some of the operas she sang were "Cenerentola, " "The Bartered Bride," The Magic Flute," The Mikado," "Dido and Aeneas," and "Oedipus Rex."

Branscombe Choral

Kathleen Shimeta has been surprised and delighted by the many things that have happened. For example, last spring Shimeta was performing at Hofstra University when a woman in the audience surprised her with a booklet of programs and a photo album of the Branscombe Choral concerts. On another occasion Kathleen visited a woman in Jamestown, New York, who had actually been in the Choral who offered her remembrances and some recordings of that group.

Two or three years ago Kathleen received an email from a woman whose mother and grandmother had both been members of the Chrorale. That call resulted in Shimeta becoming the recipient of all the Branscombe Choral scrapbooks, which will go eventually to the Branscombe Collection in the New York Public Library.She has been overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of these people.

Kathleen Shimeta has several dates coming up and a few for 2009 include appearances in March at the Festival of Women Composers in Hartford, Connecticut, whose founder is Heather Seaton; Texas A and M University in April, and a performance at the Peninsula Library In Lawrence, New York, also in the spring.

Source

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