About this episode
Happy Women’s History Month from us here at Take Note! In this episode we hear about two compositions that align with this year’s Women’s History Month theme: “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future.”
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Take Note — Women's History Month 2026. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
This is Take Note. I'm Anna Williams, and we're taking history by the tempo. What had its beginnings in 1980 as a single week's observance has expanded into a month-long celebration of women's contributions to culture, history, and society. Women's history month is celebrated every March, and the theme for 2026 is leading the change, women shaping a sustainable future. This week on Take Note, we'll take a listen to music composed by women that shines a light on environmental issues. Rachel Portman is an Academy Award-winning English composer. Her 2019 composition, Earth Song, applies the words of poet Nick Drake, an environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, to a stirring choral representation of the idea of a symbiotic relationship between human beings and the Earth. Composer Miriamma Young is no stranger to composing around the subject of the natural world,
with works concerning topics that range from endangered birds to the wood-wide web, the vast and hidden network of fungi and plants. The piece you're hearing now is this earthly round written in 2014 for alto saxophone and prepared piano. The musical material slowly erodes until it reaches its haunting and extinguished conclusion, calling to protect and preserve our shared planet. Notice a production of classical Arizona PBS, a service of Arizona State University.
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