Yazz Ahmed has written new music commissioned by Tomorrow’s Warriors to be premiered by the all-female Nu Civilisation Orchestra.
Titled ‘Polyhymnia’ the music to be performed at the 2015 Women of the World Festival has been inspired by the first Saudi female film director Haifaa al-Mansour; Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the south of the USA; Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for fighting for her right to go to school; African-American civil rights activist Rosa Parks; the Suffragettes, British women fighting for the right to vote; and jazz saxophonist Barbara Thompson who as a performer has battled Parkinson’s disease to continue making music despite suffering great pain.
Tomorrow’s Warriors CEO Janine Irons MBE says in a statement: “Since the beginning of time, women have had to demonstrate remarkable resilience to survive the challenges of inequality and life generally. As a young woman in the music industry, Yazz will be very mindful of this.” Ahmed, a British-Bahrani composer and trumpeter, further comments: “I see my composition as a way to celebrate women, and to raise their aspirations. In choosing women from today as well as women from the past – many of whom we still don’t know enough about – for me these six movements celebrate some rather special people who fought and continue to fight.”
Stephen Graham
The concert takes place in The Purcell Room on Sunday 8 March. Tickets: here
Yazz Ahmed above
[updated from 20 Jan article]